This Is How The National Park Service Issues an Eviction Notice

"We all came down to the reality that no matter how much we fight, these cats are not going to be able to stay where they are."
-- Nancy Rogers of K9 Kastle 

It was a sad, tragic, and outrageously unjust end for thirty-three intrepid and noble cats who for the past eleven years had called Plum Beach in Brooklyn home. As integral parts of a fabulously successful TNR colony, they had weathered all the inclement nastiness that Mother Nature had to dish out, not the least of which were hurricanes Irene and Sandy and the recently bitterly cold winter, as well as having been forced to fend off countless predators, both animal and human.

Regrettably, neither they nor their incredibly dedicated caretakers proved to be much of a match for the ingrained hatred and underhanded machinations of the National Park Service (NPS) which has dominion over Plum Beach thanks to its being part of the twenty-six-thousand-six-hundred-acre Gateway National Recreation Area (GNRA). With its twenty-two-thousand glorified and gilded welfare bums who masquerade as public servants on top of an annual operating budget of around $3 billion, this cat-hating behemoth of the Interior Department easily had the volunteers hopelessly outgunned and outspent.

All of the cats had been sterilized, vaccinated, and sheltered as well as fed and watered twice a day by the volunteers. Moreover, there had not been any complaints as far as it is known about their presence from either residents of the surrounding neighborhood of Plum Beach or those living in nearby Sheepshead Bay and Gerritsen Beach.

"These cats have been there for years," Nancy Rogers of K9 Kastle of Brooklyn told the New York Daily News on June 14th. (See "A Colony of Feral Cats Is Set to Be Cleared from Gateway National Recreation Area in Plum Beach on Orders from the Federal Park Service.")"They bother no one."

Equally important, they provided an invaluable and cost-free service to the community. "Do you know there's a rat problem in New York City?" Rogers' colleague, Janelle Barabash of Midwood, pointed out the obvious to the Brooklyn Daily on June 13th. (See "Puss Gets the Boot.")"(Do) you know where there's not a rat problem? Plumb (sic) Beach."

Being able to see and spend time with the cats also provided a measure of pleasure for those area residents who, for one reason or another, are unable to keep those of their own in their apartments. Even the simple act of just helping these exquisite beings to survive in a hostile world provided immeasurable psychological benefits for some of the volunteers.

"It's like therapy for me -- I was in Vietnam," Joe Destefan of Bay Ridge confided to the Brooklyn Daily. "I still go to group (therapy), but this helps a lot."

It accordingly came as a profound shock to Rogers and her colleagues when the NPS out of the blue lowered the boom on them and the cats. In the typically sneaky, underhanded, and authoritarian fashion that has come to characterize the federal government's abhorrent treatment of cats all across the country, the NPS blindsided the volunteers on June 8th when it posted a sign at the entrance to Plum Beach ordering the cats out of the area.

In a carefully calculated maneuver clearly designed to make doubly certain that few, if any, of them would be able to make it out alive, the NPS gave the volunteers only a measly five days in order to remove them. After that, the NPS vowed to destroy their winterized shelters and feeding stations and then to trap and hand them over to shelters.

Nancy Rogers Worked Tirelessly in Order to Save the Cats

"At this point, our plans are to take those structures down and try to round up the cats and take them to a city shelter," Daphne Yun, a propagandist for the NPS, bellowed loud and clear to the Daily News. While she was at it, she could not resist the overwhelming temptation to claim that none of the felines would be harmed.

Rogers quickly responded by exposing Yun as a barefaced liar. "They (the cats) get five days before they put them down," she told the Brooklyn Daily.

Although during his twelve-year tenure as mayor of New York City, Mike "Dirty Bloomers" Bloomberg often blew long and hard about transforming the pet slaughterhouse capital of America into no-kill, he did almost nothing in order to make that ideal a reality. His successor, phony-baloney and loudmouthed Bill de Blasio, is an even bigger joke as a public servant in that he behaves as if he were totally ignorant of the fact that scores of cats, dogs, and other companion animals are being systematically exterminated every day of the week at city shelters by Animal Care and Control.

Much more to the point, since the parking lot and green way which provide access to Plum Beach are under the joint control of the city's departments of Parks and Recreation and Transportation, de Blasio could have leaned heavily on the NPS to have allowed the cats to stay. Failing that, he could have designated a portion of the parking lot as their sanctuary.

The NPS most assuredly could have been dealt with but that is way too much to expect from a inveterate blowhard and bum like de Blasio. Besides, he is far too busy vacationing in Italy and hobnobbing with the sleazy, lower-than-dirt Clintons to ever be troubled with life and death matters and animal cruelty issues.

As for the NPS, its rationale for ousting the cats is every bit as old and tiresome as it is disingenuous. First of all, it claims that they are a threat to shorebirds, small mammals, and reptiles.

Secondly, it maintains that they are an invasive species and therefore do not have any right to exist in any of the fifty-nine parks and three-hundred-forty-two national monuments, conservation areas, and historical sites that it has appropriated as its own private fiefdoms. Finally, it claims that their presence on federally-controlled property is illegal.

"For a national park to have any exotic species that could pose a threat to native wildlife is in direct conflict with national law," the agency's Doug Adamo pontificated to the Brooklyn Daily. "It is conservatively estimated that one billion birds (are) killed by domestic cats in the United States alone."

Local ornithologists were beside themselves with glee at the unexpected coup delivered to them on a silver platter by their comrades-in-arms at the NPS. "I would hope that the colony caretakers and the Park Service could work out a plan to relocate the cats that live currently at Plumb (sic) Beach to existent colonies that are not in such an environmentally sensitive area," Rob Bate of the Brooklyn Bird Club chirped to the Brooklyn Daily. "The littoral zone and salt water marshes along coasts are severely diminished habitats worldwide and deserve special consideration, protection and attention."

The Evacuated Cats Outside of Rogers' House

With her beloved cats reduced to living under a death sentence and time running out fast, Rogers was left with no alternative other than to crawl to Adamo on her hands and knees in order to beg for additional time. "It took a year and a half to trap and spay or neuter the population," she pointed out to the Brooklyn Daily. "I don't know how Doug thinks we'll do this in eight (sic) days."

In between savoring the sweet smell of victory occasioned by his finally having Rogers, her colleagues, and the cats at his mercy, Adamo somehow still managed to find a teeny-weeny bit of space in his cold, black heart in order to be generous. He accomplished that léger de main by first extending the eviction deadline to June 20th and then, reluctantly, to June 30th. What a guy!

That act of beau geste provided the cats' caretakers with a little breathing room but it in no way mitigated the enormity of the task that lay before them. All thirty-three cats had to be trapped and then temporarily housed in Rogers' garage before being permanently relocated elsewhere.

Although the particulars have not been publicly disclosed, Rogers was able to fairly quickly locate a farm south of the city (most likely in New Jersey) that was willing to take in the dispossessed felines apparently free-of-charge. "I cannot say where it is, but the cats are leaving New York," was all that she was willing to divulge to the Brooklyn Daily on June 23rd. (See "Caretakers Moving Plumb (sic) Beach Felines to Undisclosed, Out-of-State Location.")

Left unanswered, however, is the disquieting issue of whether she ultimately was successful in her attempt to trap and remove all of the cats. The only thing that is known for certain is that she trapped at least twenty of them.

"These are the hard ones -- the holdouts," she admitted to the New York Daily News on June 30th. (See "It's End of Feline (sic) for Brooklyn Cat Colony.")"I have two that have been staring at me all morning."

Unless the June 30th deadline was extended, any cats that Rogers and her colleagues left behind surely would have been rounded up by the NPS and either liquidated on the spot or turned over to Animal Care and Control to kill. Plus, just because Rogers and her assistants have been given the bum's rush in Plum Beach that does not mean that Brooklynites are about to mend their ways and discontinue using the area as a convenient spot to dump their unwanted companions.

"New ones are going to show up to take their place," Rogers sagely pointed out to the Daily News in the June 14th article cited supra. "That's just the way it works."

With Rogers and her helpers no longer around to protect them, the NPS will be able to do with the cats as it not only sees fit but to its sinister delight. Rogers may have saved some of the cats through her herculean efforts but the real killing has yet to begin.

"We all came down to the reality that no matter how much we fight, these cats are not going to be able to stay where they are," is how she summed up her decision to throw in the towel to the Daily News in the June 30th article cited supra.

Inseparable Patches and Rusty

In addition to all the back-breaking work involved in capturing the cats, they also had to be seen by a veterinarian in order to make certain that their vaccinations were up-to-date before the farm would accept them. They also had to be transported to their new home and Rogers and her colleagues likely are responsible for the cost of their continued care.

As best it could be determined, no animal rights group either within or outside of New York City was willing to lift so much as a lousy finger in order to help the volunteers save the cats. An online fundraiser at www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/save-the-plum-beach-cats/192464 did succeed, however, in taking in $2,535 of the projected $3,000 needed in order to relocate them.

Even though the NPS was able to prevail without so much as breaking a sweat in this latest confrontation between the massive and utterly tyrannical federal bureaucracy and cats, it nevertheless is of paramount importance that its outrageous lies are not allowed to go unchallenged. In addition to Yun's whopper about shelters in New York City not killing cats, the NPS failed to offer up so much as a scintilla of evidence that they were having an adverse impact upon birds, small mammals, and snakes.

Instead, Adamo relies upon a thoroughly discredited study conducted by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the NPS's sister agency within the Interior Department, the diabolical United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), that ludicrously blamed cats living in the United States for annually killing between one and four billion birds and anywhere from six to twenty-three billion mammals. (See Nature Communications, January 29, 2013, "The Impact of Free-Ranging Domestic Cats on Wildlife in the United States.")

If the ingrained prejudices of those two cat-hating organizations were not sufficient in their own right to discredit the study's conclusions, the fact that Nicole Dauphiné worked on it before she was convicted of attempting to poison a TNR-managed colony in Washington's Meridian Hill Park is surely the clincher. (See Cat Defender posts of July 12, 2011, November 18, 2011, and January 6, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Arrest of Nico Dauphiné for Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats Unmasks the National Zoo as a Hideout for Ailurophobes and Criminals,""Nico Dauphiné, Ph.D., Is Convicted of Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats but Questions Remain Concerning the Smithsonian's Role," and "Nico Dauphiné Is Let Off with an Insultingly Lenient $100 Fine in a Show Trial That Was Fixed from the Very Beginning.")

Although the study was totally bogus and its authors not only biased but completely lacking in integrity, that has not prevented perennial cat-haters within the capitalist media from immediately and uncritically passing it off as the gospel truth to a gullible public. (See The New York Times, January 29, 2013, "That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You Think" and Cat Defender posts of June 15, 2009 and December 8, 2007 entitled, respectively, "American Bird Conservancy, The New York Times, and the Humane Society Unite to Form an Achse des Bösen Against Cats" and "All the Lies That Fit: Scheming New York Times Hires a Bird Lover to Render His 'Unbiased' Support for James M. Stevenson.")

Furthermore, since all of the Plum Beach cats had been sheltered and generously fed twice a day by the volunteers that largely eliminated their need to hunt. A far more plausible scenario is that it was precisely the cats themselves who were being preyed upon by birds, dogs, other animals, and the likes of Dauphiné. (See Cat Defender posts of July 31, 2006, August 14, 2008, August 1, 2011, and February 16, 2012 entitled, respectively, "Fifteen-Year-Old Bamboo Miraculously Survives Being Abducted and Mauled by a Hoot Owl in British Columbia,""Birds Killing Cats: Blackie Is Abducted by a Sea Gull and Then Dropped but Her Fall Is Broken by a Barbed-Wire Fence,""Eddie Is Saved by an Outdoor Umbrella after He Is Abducted from the Balcony of His Manhattan Apartment and Then Dropped by a Redtailed Hawk," and "Hawk Suffers Puncture Wounds to His Stomach and One Paw When He Is Abducted by a Raptor Hired to Patrol a City Dump on Vancouver Island.")

Old Birdie Bate is likewise lying through his rotten teeth when he blames cats for the destruction of coastal zones around the world. Au contraire, it is precisely developers, polluters, oil and natural gas extraction companies, the United States Navy, and man-made climate change that are the real culprits.

On Plum Beach, for example, water and wind erosion are major dilemmas. Moreover, such damage is destined to only grow worse unless drastic measures are immediately undertaken in order to lessen the likelihood of another major storm such as Hurricane Sandy.

Neither the feds, birders, nor wildlife biologists want to hear so much as a syllable about climate change and the likelihood that it is destined to obliterate life as it is known on this planet; instead, they much prefer to demonize and kill cats. After all, such a perverse and dishonest agenda not only presents them with an unlimited number of opportunities in order to slake their thirst for feline blood but it also puts enormous sums of money in their pockets as well.

Blondie

Thirdly, Adamo's branding of cats as an exotic species constitutes the very epitome of dishonesty and hypocrisy. Carried to its logical conclusion, his sottise would make not only him and his colleagues at the NPS members of an exotic species but also hundreds of avian and mammalian species as well.

All immigrants, foreign visitors, imports, and even ballast water from cargo ships also would fall under that rubric. So, too, would deadly communicable diseases, dozens of varieties of bedbugs, and insects contained in fruit, vegetables, wood products, and other items but absolutely no one, especially the feds, wants to curb their importation. Why, just a few days ago the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta went out of their way in order to introduce the Ebola virus to North America.

The feds additionally allow genetically engineered crops to not only be cultivated on public lands but to be treated with pesticides that have been linked to precipitate declines in honey bees, monarch butterflies, and other species. For whatever it is worth, the USFWS claims that it is going to phase out both practices on most, but not all, public lands by January of 2016. (See The Seattle Times, August 6, 2014, "Wildlife Refuges Phasing Out GMO Crops, Pesticides.")

To this very day, however, neither the NPS nor its sister agency, the Bureau of Land Management, has been able to muster enough moxie in order to evict a herd of cows owned by Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy from federal land even though the animals are an introduced species and he has not paid so much as a red cent of the paltry grazing fees that they have assessed him since 1993! Unlike the cats' law-abiding and peaceable caretakers in Plum Beach, Bundy and his militiamen are armed to the teeth and the NPS starts to tremble in its silk drawers at even the thought of coming within ten feet of them.

The agency's conduct is made all the more reprehensible in that it does not have anything even remotely approaching a valid excuse for being so shamefully craven. After all, it is well understood that any poor bullet that found itself on a collision course with any of the NPS's old ornery hides would immediately turn around in midair and go off in search of a softer target.  (See The Guardian of London, April 19, 2014, "A Rancher's Armed Battle Against the United States Government Is Standard Libertarian Fare.")

The picture is thus clear. In the feds' twisted minds, deadly diseases, imported and genetically modified species, farmers, ranchers, mineral extraction companies, illegal immigrants, criminals, and even potential terrorists are welcome on these shores; cats, however, must go.

In contradistinction to the vast majority of those species and individuals, the cats from Plum Beach and elsewhere were born here and it therefore is their birthright not only to exist but to flourish in this country. In addition to the many benefits that they bestow upon society, their impact upon the environment is minimal when compared to that of man and other species.

The appalling disingenuousness of the distinction that ornithologists and wildlife biologists make between native and so-called introduced species is exposed for what it is once it is realized that the feds routinely evict and slaughter in droves even those species that they have designated as native, such as jaguars, cougars, bobcats, wolves, foxes, bears, coyotes, prairie dogs, and geese. All totaled, the USDA's Wildlife Services kill up to four million wild animals each year at the request of primarily economic interests and cat-haters. (See Cat Defender posts of September 15, 2005 and May 21, 2009 entitled, respectively, "United States Government Exterminates Millions of Wild Animals at the Behest of Capitalists" and "Macho B., America's Last Jaguar, Is Illegally Trapped, Radio-Collared, and Killed Off by Wildlife Biologists in Arizona," the Washington Post, December 15, 2013 and April 24, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Petition Targets 'Rogue' Killings by Wildlife Services" and "USDA's Wildlife Services Killed Four Million Animals in 2013; Seen as an Overstep by Some," and The Star Ledger of Newark, March 23, 2014, "Port Authority Animal Killings in New Jersey Have Little Effect on Bird Strikes, Data Reveals (sic).)"

In spite of all of their hypocrisy and blatant dishonesty, ornithologists and wildlife biologists bandy about the terms exotic and invasive just as if they suddenly had arrived at some stupendous intellectual insight. Much like the doped-up followers of some religious fanatic, these wild-eyed egomaniacs tingle from head to toe at their own cleverness but at the same time are flummoxed to understand why the world does not fall at their feet in recognition of their overwhelming genius.

Adamo's assertion that cats are forbidden by law to venture onto federally-controlled lands is dubious at best. Although the feds often cite the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 as granting them the authority to evict and kill cats with impunity, both of them were enacted long before TNR became en vogue and it is extremely doubtful that their drafters ever envisioned that they would be put to such an evil purpose.

The feds' draconian attitude toward cats is therefore merely a bureaucratic policy and not a federal mandate. As such it could be overturned by either the president or Congress exercising its oversight authority.

Besides if it were the law of the land, every ornithologist and wildlife biologist in the country would have been in federal court long ago demanding that it be rigorously enforced. Since that is hardly the case, they have been reduced to lobbying Barack Obama's latest flunky at the Department of the Interior, Sally Jewell, to make it an ironclad bureaucratic mandate on all lands under her dominion.

For example, back in February Ted "Slick Willie" Williams of the National Audubon Society (NAS) drafted a letter to her to that effect and it was signed by practically every Audubon chapter and wildlife biologist in the country as well as PETA. (See Fly Rod and Reel, February 14, 2014, "The Honorable Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Department of the Interior.")

Boots

In a February 16th online postscript addressed to an avid supporter who passed himself off as none other than Sir Henry Bufton Tufton, Slick Willie also reiterated his and the NAS's often repeated call that all cats be illegally poisoned out of existence. (See Cat Defender post of May 18, 2013 entitled "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It.")

Bufton Tufton, by the way, not only admits to shooting dogs but to poisoning them with Tylenol® as well and although Williams did not explicitly endorse such an abhorrent and illegal practice, he did not denounce it either. Dogs, accordingly, could be next on the NAS's ever-expanding hit list. (See Cat Defender post of March 15, 2007 entitled "Connecticut Audubon Society Shows It True Colors by Calling for the Slaughter of Feral Cats, Mute Swans, Mallards, Canada Geese, and Deer.")

Furthermore, the NPS's outlandish claim that it has a legal mandate to lethally or otherwise remove cats from all properties under its purview is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to the feds' lawlessness in dealing with them and their caretakers. In reality, they do not recognize either any limitations or boundaries in the exercise of their self-anointed right to kill cats.

In 2008, for instance, agents from Wildlife Services sneaked into residential neighborhoods throughout Key Largo and, presumably, elsewhere in the Florida Keys where they illegally trapped and killed dozens of cats. "They went into neighborhoods looking for cats. They didn't care where they went," Dave Gable, a welder on Garden Cove Drive who had six of his cats stolen and killed by the agency, told the Florida Keys Reporter of Key Largo on May 8th of this year. (See "Key Largo Man Says Feds Unfairly Targeting His Cats to Save Woodrat.")"They killed them all."

In its latest round of illegal seizures and killings intended to rid the Keys in general and Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge in particular of cats, the USFWS has been trapping them in both Dangy Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park and on private property as well. For example, on April 23rd the agency illegally trapped a cat named Rocky belonging to world famous scuba diver Captain Spencer C. Slate of Garden Cove Drive in Key Largo.

The trapping not only left Rocky with a bloodied face but it also cost Slate a $75 fine. "They (the traps) were all about fifty feet from my goddamned property (and not in Crocodile Lake)," he angrily told the Florida Keys Reporter. (See Cat Defender posts of May 24, 2007 and June 23, 2011 entitled, respectively, "USDA and Wildlife Service Commence Trapping and Killing Cats on Florida's Big Pine Key" and "Wallowing in Welfare Dollars, Lies, and Prejudice, the Bloodthirsty United States Fish and Wildlife Service Is Again Killing Cats in the Florida Keys.")

The USFWS additionally funds private bird and wildlife advocacy groups, such as Biodiversity Works in Edgartown, Massachusetts, which of late has been illegally trapping and removing cats from Martha's Vineyard. (See The Martha's Vineyard Times, May 28, 2014, "Fur Flies over Efforts to Protect Piping Plovers from Free Roaming Cats.")

When it is not actually killing cats outright, the USFWS occupies itself funding bogus, anti-feline research by the likes of the Smithsonian, Stanley Temple of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and others. It also gallivants all across the country preaching its inveterate hatred of both cats and TNR to either anyone or group fool enough to lend it an ear.

Even on those extremely rare occasions when it can be prevailed upon to allow cat advocates to humanely remove condemned animals from properties under its malignant thumb it demands in return that the rescued cats be cruelly imprisoned indoors for the remainder of their natural lives even if their new homes are located on private property. (See Cat Defender posts of June 27, 2008, July 10, 2008, April 28, 2009, November 20, 2009, and February 24, 2012 entitled, respectively, "United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy Hatch a Diabolical Plan to Gun Down Two-Hundred Cats on San Nicolas Island,""The Ventura County Star Races to the Defense of the Cat-Killers on San Nicolas Island,""Quislings at the Humane Society Sell Out San Nicolas's Cats to the Assassins at the Diabolical United States Fish and Wildlife Service,""Memo to the Humane Society: Tell the World Exactly How Many Cats You and Your Honeys at the USFWS Have Murdered on San Nicolas Island," and "United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Humane Society Hoist a Glass in Celebration of Their Extermination of the Cats on San Nicolas Island.")

Perhaps most egregious of all, the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) now has a legal precedent to regulate the minute details of even those felines who reside in purely private businesses and, presumably by extension, private residences as well. (See Cat Defender post of January 24, 2013 entitled "The Feds Now Have Cats and Their Owners Exactly Where They Want Them Thanks to an Outrageous Court Ruling Targeting the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.")

Even if Congress were to belatedly enact a statute designed to legalize the outrageous power grabs made by its buddies within the NPS and other federal agencies, that would not necessarily be the end of the matter. For example, back in 2006 Fresno's big-shot mayor, Alan Autry, ordered his goons within the police department to destroy a homeless encampment occupied by Pamela Kincaid and others.

Itsy-Bitsy

The high-strutting Stürmtruppen not only demolished their tents but while they were at it they confiscated and subsequently destroyed an undisclosed number of kittens, clothing, tools, identification cards, governmental documents, family photographs, and even the cremated ashes of a deceased person. San Francisco attorney Paul Alexander of Heller Ehrman, The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, and the ACLU Foundation of Northern California in turn sued the city in United States District Court of Fresno where they were able to convince presiding Judge Oliver W. Wanger that the cops' theft of the personal property of the down-and-outers violated the just compensation clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Applied to the situation in Plum Beach, the cats were the de facto personal property of their caretakers as were their shelters, feeding stations, food, water, and other personal effects. The NPS is accordingly guilty of a gross violation of the just compensation clause. As a matter of purely bureaucratic policy, it may have had the authority to order the cats' removal but it had absolutely no legal right under the Constitution to steal either them or the personal belongings of their caretakers.

Any other interpretation of events would make a complete mockery of the just compensation clause. In particular, it would grant federal officials the authority to not only rob but to possibly even kill individuals who either wittingly or unwittingly set foot on federal properties, including highways, where their presence is not wanted.

The NPS's fifth outrageous lie is that is only learned of the cats' presence in May. Actually, it and other federal agencies had known about the colony from the very beginning.

In fact, when the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was rebuilding Plum Beach in the wake of the extensive damage done to it by Hurricane Sandy it graciously provided the caretakers with a key to a fenced-off area. Although it must be said that the USACE's conduct in this case is totally at odds with how horribly it treated the cats living in West Bank Park at Lake Lanier a few years ago. (See Cat Defender post of April 17, 2010 entitled "Lake Lanier's Cats Face an Uncertain Future Following Their Ouster by the Liars and Defamers at the United States Army Corps of Engineers.")

The NPS's actions in Plum Beach therefore need to be viewed in light of the feds' all-out war against cats. Whereas the USFWS is the main protagonist in this battle, it receives plenty of assistance from Wildlife Services, APHIS, and the United States Forest Service.

In addition to the USACE's crimes against cats, the Defense Department exterminates them in droves at the hundreds of military installations that it maintains both at home and abroad. (See Cat Defender posts of November 14, 2006, June 16, 2008, and July 16, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Military Killing Cats and Dogs by the Tens of Thousands as Imperialistic America Attempts to Conquer the World,""Targeted for Elimination by the American War Machine and Cheney's Henchmen, Baghdad's Cats Are Befriended by an English Mercenary," and "Yellow Two Is Shot and Maimed for Life at Fort Hood in the United States Army's Latest Criminal Offense Against Cats.")

Vivisectors at governmental laboratories carve up and torture to death countless cats each year during the course of their utterly worthless experiments. The feds likewise generously fund universities to butcher even more of them.

In recent years even the languishing United States Postal Service has gotten in on the cat-hating craze that is spreading throughout the federal bureaucracy like a malignant tumor. (See Cat Defender post of February 11, 2009 entitled "U.S. Postal Service Knuckles Under to the Threats and Lies of a Cat-Hater and Gives Sammy the Boot.")

The common denominators in the feds' war on cats are easily recognizable regardless of whether the agency doing the maligning and killing is the NPS or some other entity. Most noticeably, all of them are first and foremost welfare bums who finance their atrocities with the tax dollars paid to them by the masses, including cat owners and advocates.

Generous and Dedicated Carolyn Euvino

Secondly, their anti-cat diatribes, which they ludicrously pass off as science, are concocted by inveterate liars who do not have so much as a scintilla of either objectivity or honesty. Thirdly, all of the aforementioned federal agencies do the bidding of ornithologists and wildlife biologists while cat advocacy groups are completely excluded from the decision-making process.

Their outrageous lies and crimes are in turn endorsed by and peddled to the public by such utterly reprehensible and phony-baloney animal rights groups as PETA and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The feds also benefit mightily from the uncritical support that they receive from not only The New York Times but the Washington Post, the Orlando Sentinel, USA Today, and other unscrupulous media outlets who care absolutely nothing about either objectivity or the truth.

Just as birds of a feather flock together, it is not the least bit surprising that the feds have aligned themselves with such patently lawless organizations as the NAS, the American Bird Conservancy, HSUS, and PETA. In the final analysis, the NPS's expulsion of the Plum Beach cats can only be viewed as a poignant example of the feds bending over backwards in order to reward cat defamers and killers, such as Dauphiné, Slick Willie, PETA, and others, for their myriad of despicable crimes. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007, February 9, 2007, and October 7, 2011 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in North Carolina Courtroom,"" Verdict in PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs," and "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

As reprehensible as all of that is, this story is concerned with considerably more than the lies and ruthlessness of the NPS. It likewise is about much more than the injustice of their eviction.

It even entails a good deal more than the steadfastness and dedication of their heroic caretakers who through their actions have proven once again that it is precisely they and other like them who constitute the heart, soul, backbone, and financial lifeblood of the feline protection movement; all others are impostors. Whereas all of those groups and elements have come to dominate center stage in this debate, none of that alters the salient fact that this story is first and last about thirty-three long-suffering and noble cats, each of whom has a personality and a history.

Most prominent among them is a cat named Rusty who cruelly and unconscionably was dumped at Plum Beach more than a decade ago. Then there is Patches who, although born into the colony, is descended from parents who, like Rusty, were themselves abandoned.

Over the years Rusty and Patches struck up a friendship and now they are inseparable. Although it is not known if Rogers was able to trap and remove both of them, hopefully that proved to be the case and they are still together today at their new home.

There also is Blondie, a shy brown and white domesticated cat, who was dumped at the colony three years ago. Both Boots, a friendly tortoiseshell, and Itsy-Bitsy, a brown cat with black markings, would make wonderful companions.

All of the remaining cats have stories also that desperately need to be told but, malheureusement, the pertinent information regarding their lives has not been publicly divulged. Moreover, now that they are gone it is highly unlikely that the world ever will get the opportunity to either meet them or to even come to know that they once graced the face of the earth.

As far as homes go, Plum Beach was not any great shakes under any circumstances. The area is exposed, cold, windy, wet, and subject to erosion.

It also was somewhat dangerous for the cats in that it serves as a rendezvous for both homosexuals and those who make a sport out of preying upon them. (See The New York Times, October 14, 2007, "A Man's Death Shines a Light on a Shady Parking Lot.")

The Sun Has Finally Set on the Plum Beach Cats

It nevertheless was the only home that most of the cats ever had known and anyone who knows anything about the species fully realizes only too well that turf is everything to a cat. As an old Sprichwort maintains, dogs belong to people but cats belong to places.

The cats, however, have lost so much more than their beloved home in that they no longer have their devoted caretakers. One of them, Carolyn Euvino, not only had looked after them for the past eleven years but she spent $30,000 out of her own pocket in order to have them sterilized. Needless to say, individuals like her do not grow on trees.

"When the snow was waist-high this winter, we took a $120 cab to come feed the cats," she disclosed to the Brooklyn Daily in the June 13th article cited supra. "I'm a 'crazy cat lady'."

All of that is now a thing of the past. The cats have been uprooted, trapped, bandied about, poked and probed by veterinarians, and finally shanghaied to a new and strange location.

The psychological and emotional wringer that they have been put through could not possibly have been anything short of frightening and traumatic. In spite of all the simply diabolical brain experiments that vivisectors all across the world have performed on cats, not a great deal is known about how they deal with stress, death, and the loss of loved ones.

It is strongly suspected, however, that their minds work pretty much the same as those of their human counterparts. With that being the case, the best that can be hoped is that the Plum Beach cats somehow will be able to find the emotional resources that they are so desperately going to need in order to cope with what Charles Dickens euphemistically would have called their "reduced circumstances."

Euvino, Rogers, and their other faithful caretakers also are undoubtedly going to terribly miss seeing and caring for them. Anyone even remotely involved in rescuing cats fully realizes that there are not any lulls in the struggle. New arrivals are constantly turning up and their urgent needs must be promptly addressed.

In spite of all of that, it is sincerely hoped that the volunteers will not completely forget all about the cats but rather will find the time in order to occasionally visit them. It might still be feasible even at this late date for them to belatedly place some of them in loving homes.

Although the original online fundraising appeal ended on July 6th, it is still possible for donations to be made to Rogers at K9Kastle@gmail.com. Such donations will go a long way toward ensuring not only the continued care of those cats that have been evacuated but also to attend to those either inadvertently left behind or destined to be abandoned on Plum Beach in the future.

The evil designs of the NPS and its many allies can only be checkmated when fans of the species emulate the sterling example set by the volunteers and open up both their hearts and wallets and give generously. Neither the cats themselves nor their wonderfully dedicated and caring guardians are deserving of anything less.

Photos: Steve Solomonson of the Brooklyn Daily (Sign, Rogers, Rusty and Patches, Blondie, Boots, Itsy-Bitsy, and Euvino) and Nancy Rogers (caged cats and an unidentified cat).

The Way They Were: Dodger and Fee Jeanes

"It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make. I cancelled it twice."
-- Fee Jeanes

It recently has been learned that Dodger was killed off by his owner, forty-six-year-old Fee Jeanes of Bridport in Dorset, sometime in early February of 2012. Although his death is by now very old news, that in no way makes it either any less sad or revoltingly unjust.

Dodger, as it may be recalled by some, was a friendly and intrepid fifteen-year-old, ginger-colored tom who skyrocketed to international acclaim in December of 2011 when it was disclosed that he regularly rode the mass transit system in Dorset and Devonshire by his lonesome. Most notably, he was regular on First Bus's ten-mile run between Bridport and Charmouth.

At other times he could be found aboard the company's number fifty-three bus which operates along the Jurassic Coast between Poole in Dorset and Exeter in Devonshire. More often that not, however, he could be found hanging out at the bus station in Bridport. (See Cat Defender post of January 25, 2012 entitled "The Innocence of the Lambs: Unaware of the Dangers That Threaten His Very Existence, Dodger Charms Commuters on the Bridport to Charmouth Line.")

Jeanes allegedly had him killed off due to the presence of a stomach tumor that he is believed to have been diagnosed with sometime before Christmas of 2011. Since no additional details have been made public, it is difficult to know if the tumor could have been successfully treated with either surgery or some other means.

That which is not in dispute, however, is Jeanes's eternal gratitude to Bredy Veterinary Centre on Sea Road North for relieving her of both the expense and trouble of caring for an elderly and ailing cat. "Everyone at Bredy Vets has been brilliant all the way through this," she gushed to the Bridport News on February 22, 2012. (See "Dodger the Cat Is Put Down.")

By characterizing the bloodthirsty practitioners' dirty work in such glowing terms she is surely laying it on a bit thick because any idiot, shekel counter, and selfish, lazy bum can kill a cat. By contrast, recognizing that all cats have an inalienable right to live out their lives to the very end, cherishing every moment that they are alive, and being willing to do whatever is required in order to preserve and extend their all-too-brief existences is the first step on the road to true compassion and enlightenment.

The overwhelming majority of veterinarians, on the other hand, are little more than cold-hearted, bloodsucking mercenaries in that killing off unwanted cats, dogs, and other animals at the behest of their owners, shelters, and others constitutes a substantial portion of their practice. (See Cat Defender posts of March 19, 2014, January 11, 2012, December 22, 2011, and July 28, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Cheap and Greedy Moral Degenerates at PennVet Extend Their Warmest Christmas Greetings to an Impecunious, but Preeminently Treatable, Cat Via a Jab of Sodium Pentobarbital,""A Deadly Intrigue Concocted by a Thief, a Shelter, and a Veterinary Chain Costs Ginger the Continued Enjoyment of His Golden Years,""Rogue TNR Practitioner and Three Unscrupulous Veterinarians Kill at Least Sixty-Two Cats with the Complicity of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals," and "Tammy and Maddy Are Forced to Pay the Ultimate Price after Their Owner and an Incompetent Veterinarian Elect to Play Russian Roulette with Their Lives.")

For whatever it is worth, Jeanes insists that the decision to do in Dodger was anything but an easy one. "It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make," she swore to the Bridport News. "I cancelled it twice."

Even if she is being truthful, she likely only demurred because it was Christmas and she did not want to spoil that special time of the year for her three children, Jack, Emily, and William. It is, after all, well known that innumerable cat owners wait until after the holidays before killing off and abandoning their companions.

She additionally claims to be broken up about Dodger's demise. "The family are (sic) in tears," she confided to the Bridport News. "Poor old Dodger, it is very sad."

Even if her initial grief was real enough she certainly got over it awfully fast because soon thereafter she had graduated to rationalizing his death. "Dodger had a good life," she vouched to the Bridport News. "He was a brilliant cat and was spoilt rotten."

Named after the Artful Dodger in Charles Dickens' novel, Oliver Twist, he was renowned for befriending perfect strangers and gracing the laps of commuters. In particular, he is known to have substantially lifted the spirits of a sick woman on the number fifty-three bus by simply sitting on her lap.

"He made a lot of people happy," Jeanes told the Bridport News. "The response to him was amazing."

Dodger was buried in Jeanes's garden but it has not been disclosed if he was provided with either a memorial service or a tombstone. Jeanes did, however, put up a notice at the bus station in order to let both commuters and drivers know that they had seen the last of him.

Normally, that would have been the end of the matter, ashes to ashes and dust to dust as the Anglicans are fond of intoning, but since Dodger was such a special cat and because he had touched so many people his life and, especially, his death are deserving of additional examination. Although it is way too late to do him any good, such an inquiry might one day prove beneficial to other cats who are experiencing some of the same difficulties and challenges that plagued his life.

Most important of all is the question of how he became so fatally ill and, although the cause of leiomyosarcomas is unknown, it is strongly suspected that his diet could have been to blame. "He loves it there (the Birdport bus station) because there are lots of people around and they all drop their sandwiches and pork pies," Jeanes told the Dorset Echo of Weymouth on December 14, 2011. (See "Dodger the Cat Hops on Bridport Buses.")

Whereas an occasional sandwich and a pork pie would not have killed him, such a fare was woefully deficient in the nutrients and vitamins that he needed. A far better choice would have been a diet consisting of either commercial cat food or raw meat.

Always the Perfect Gentleman, Dodger Waits for His Turn to Board

Moreover, it is doubtful that he received much of either of those because he was so seldom home. "He is down there (at the bus station) all day and I have to go out in the night to make sure he is okay," Jeanes revealed to the Dorset Echo.

Every bit as alarming, there simply is not any way of knowing what he was picking up and being fed at either the bus station or on board the buses themselves. It is even conceivable that he could have been either intentionally poisoned or fed rotten meat. It should be axiomatic that no halfway responsible owner would want her cat to be scrounging around in the street for his next meal.

It also is pretty much a sure bet that if Jeanes so flagrantly neglected Dodger's diet, the same likely is true of his personal hygiene, grooming, and the care of minor injuries. It is not even known if she afforded him periodic veterinary check-ups.

All of those omissions pale in comparison, however, with her decision to turn him loose to roam both congested West Street and the buses night and day. In addition to the very real possibility that he might have been poisoned, Dodger easily could have been lost, stolen, or preyed upon by ailurophobes.

The biggest threat that he faced came from motorists, however. "Sometimes he just sits in the middle of the road and waits for the bus to turn up before he gets on," Jeanes acknowledged to the Daily Mail on December 15, 2011. (See "Pay? No, I've Got a Puss Pass...")

If she is still alive, a now seventeen-year-old, one-eyed cat named Krümel is likewise allowed by her irresponsible owner to not only sit but to sleep as well in the street out front of her home at the Hotel Garni Herold in Hattingen, Nordrhein Westfalen. (See Cat Defender post of September 17, 2012 entitled "Contrary to the Neighborhood Scuttlebutt, Krümel Is Alive and Well, at Least for the Time Being, at the Hotel Garni Herold.")

The English dearly cherish their peripatetic cats and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with allowing them to roam if circumstances so warrant, they never should be permitted to venture out into busy streets. Furthermore, they should not knowingly be allowed to board buses and trains, except under rare circumstances, without there being someone to look after their safety and well-being. (See Cat Defender posts of December 5, 2006, April 19, 2007, January 31, 2014, and February 6, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Milo, Who Visits the Vet by Her Lonesome, Is Named Old Blighty's Most Adventurous Cat,""Bus Hopping Macavity Earns High Praise from His Fellow Commuters for Being the 'Perfect Passenger',""Northumbrian Shrink Lays Claim to the Title of Being the World's Most Irresponsible Cat Owner by Turning Loose Jasper to Roam the Perilous Tyne and Wear Metro for Weeks on End," and "Lovable and Adventurous Percy Is Still Very Much Alive and Safely Riding the Miniature Trains in Scarborough.")

Instead of taking decisive and concrete action in order to have eliminated the myriad of dangers that imperiled Dodger's life, Jeanes instead relied upon her children, the operators of First Bus's fleet of chariots, commuters, and the general public to do her duty for her. Even more appalling, she remained unconcerned about both his safety and well-being right up until the bitter end.

"He's absolutely fine," she swore to the Dorset Echo in the article cited supra. "He comes home and sleeps at the end of my bed and spends the rest of the day at the bus station."

With such a laissez-faire attitude toward him, it is not really all that surprising that she had him killed off at the first opportunity that was presented to her. As an added incentive, she furthermore claims that he had of late begun to lose his marbles and that as a result she was getting five to six telephone calls a day from concerned citizens to go and collect him from various parts of Bridport.

Not only has she failed to produce so much as a shred of evidence in order to back up her claim, but dementia is not normally considered to be a side effect of leiomyosarcoma. A far more plausible explanation is that Dodger had lost neither his mind nor changed his habits but rather that the increased concern voiced by Jeanes's neighbors was attributable to his newfound fame.

It also is not totally out of the question that she, a lifelong hoofer since the age of three, was simply too busy managing the Fee Jeanes Toddlers Ballet on Victoria Grove Street and promoting her daughter Emily's career as a dancer in order to be bothered with the additional responsibilities that came with Dodger's notoriety which, ironically, she knowingly had foisted upon both him and herself. As a consequence, she then cooked up the sottise about him being senile as just one more rationale for having him whacked.

Besides, she candidly admits to caring only about hoofing. "It is something I love doing. I guess it started as a hobby and has just gone from strength to strength," she proclaims on her web site. "Seeing children having fun, while at the same time learning basic ballet with good discipline and enjoyment is what is important to me."

It nonetheless is nothing short of a profound pity that she cared so little about Dodger because he unquestionably was worth considerably more than either hers or Emily's hoofing careers. To put the matter in even blunter terms, he most assuredly deserved far better than a vainglorious shekel chaser for a guardian.

It is utterly outrageous but far too many cat owners are, like Jeanes, strictly fair weather guardians. C'est-à-dire, they dearly covet the unconditional love and companionship that cats offer so long as they neither cost nor trouble them too much. Once their loyal companions become either sickly or simply inconvenient to have around any longer they do not think twice about getting rid of them.

Although the cold-blooded liquidation of elderly, sickly, and unwanted cats is every bit as socially acceptable as the slaughtering of tens of trillions of terrestrial animals each year for the dinner table, that in no way makes it any less morally objectionable. Nevertheless, private individuals commit countless numbers of these dastardly deeds every day without so much as a twinge of remorse. (See Cat Defender posts of October 27, 2008 and March 12, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Loved and Admired All Over the World, Feline Heroine Scarlett Is Killed Off by Her Owner after She Becomes Ill" and "Too Cheap and Lazy to Care for Him During His Final Days, Betty Currie Has Socks Killed Off and His Corpse Burned.")

Some of these moral degenerates even have been known to stoop so low as to cash in on their unconscionable crimes. (See Cat Defender post of July 17, 2013 entitled "Not Satisfied with Merely Whacking Meiko, Garrison Keillor Struts on Stage in Order to Shed a Bucketful of Crocodile Tears and to Denigrate the Entire Species.")

Dodger Was Forced to Turn to Strangers for Both Love and Sustenance

Even those public institutions and businesses that have money to burn, such as public libraries and newspapers, are not about to care for elderly and sick cats. (See Cat Defender posts of December 7, 2006 and February 9, 2006 entitled, respectively, "After Nineteen Years of Service and Companionship, Ingrates at Iowa Library Murder Dewey Readmore Books" and "Newspaper Cat Named Tripod Is Killed Off by Journalists He Befriended in Vermont.")

So-called no-kill shelters and even Alley Cat Allies have absolutely no qualms about killing cats. (See Cat Defender posts of October 23, 2012 and January 2, 2013 entitled, respectively, "A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care" and "Alley Cat Allies Demonstrates Its Utter Contempt for the Sanctity of Life by Unconscionably Killing Off Its Office Cat, Jared.")

When it comes to homeless cats, the killing season never ends. Most of these heinous crimes are perpetrated by Animal Control officers, shelters, and cops but occasionally even their trusted caretakers cannot resist the temptation to take up arms against them. (See Cat Defender post of September 28, 2011 entitled "Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor.")

Although PETA likes to claim that all homeless cats are better off dead than alive, that is a thoroughly disingenuous argument because it feels exactly the same way about all cats. (See Cat Defender posts of October 7, 2011, January 29, 2007, and February 9, 2007 entitled, respectively, "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed,""PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in North Carolina Courtroom," and "Verdict in PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs.")

Jeanes's treatment of Dodger is further called into question by the timing of events. For instance, the Bridport News reported on December 21, 2011 that it was actually she who first contacted it about doing a story on her cat. (See "National Newshounds on the Trail of Dodger the Bus Puss.")

Coinciding as it did with the announcement soon thereafter that Dodger was suffering from stomach cancer, it would appear in retrospect that Jeanes knew that he was dying and accordingly acted with alacrity in order to capitalize on his growing popularity around Bridport before he kicked the bucket. As best as it could be determined, however, there is not any evidence to support the conclusion that she, unlike Susan Finden of Plymouth, followed through on her initial plans and has in any way profited financially from Dodger's death. (See Cat Defender posts of August 27, 2009 and January 30, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Casper Treats Himself to an Unescorted Tour Around Plymouth Each Morning Courtesy of the Number Three Bus" and "Casper Is Run Down and Killed by a Hit-and-Run Taxi Driver While Crossing the Street in Order to Get to the Bus Stop.")

As is the case with just about all cats, both the famous as well as those who live out their lives in obscurity, not a great deal is known about Dodger's life. For example, it has not even been publicly disclosed either where he was born or how long that he had lived with Jeanes and her family.

Equally important, it would be interesting to know what his life was like before he was relocated to West Street. For instance, did he also roam and ride public transit at his old address?

The only thing about him that seems to be relatively certain is that his riding of the buses in Bridport was a fairly recent development. "We moved here nineteen months ago and our house backs on to the bus station," she disclosed to the Daily Mail in the article cited supra.

It therefore might not be too far-fetched to conclude that it was precisely the close proximity of his house to the bus station coupled with Jeanes's abject neglect of him that drove him into the arms of the commuters. After that, either one of them carried him on board or otherwise he found his way aboard by himself.

Even Jeanes herself admits that it was precisely the siren call of the free food, warm laps, and the attention showered on him by both commuters and drivers alike that attracted him to the buses. That tends to make sense in that it is unlikely that either boredom, Wanderlust, or eros still held much of an appeal for a tom of his advanced years.

Nevertheless, the mere fact that Dodger was forced to venture Weit und Breit in order to procure the nourishment and nurturing that he so cruelly was denied at home is in itself a staggering indictment of Jeanes's misconduct as a guardian. Even more damnable, it very well could have been her neglect of him that shortened his life.

No matter how Dodger's short, tragic life is analyzed it is impossible to come away with any other conclusion than that he richly deserved to have been blessed with a far more attentive and caring guardian than Jeanes. By failing to fulfill her solemn obligations to him, she shortchanged not only him but, ultimately, herself as well.

"I know a lot of people are going to be very disappointed and saddened that Dodger has gone," she predicted to the Bridport News in the February 22, 2012 article cited supra.

That is putting the matter rather mildly in that he leaves behind not only the hundreds of commuters whose lives he touched so profoundly simply through his presence on the buses and at the Bridport station, but thousands of others who learned of his existence via the Internet, the Today Show on Australian television, and the women's weekly magazine, Chat. Even the suits at Whiskas were so impressed by him and his exploits that they once sent him a parcel of treats.

Sadly, he is gone now and both Bridport and the world are all the poorer. Even more disquieting, it is too late to recall him from the grave and to belatedly shower him with the love and nourishment that he was forced into cadging in random, intermittent installments from perfect strangers.

Photos: Daily Mail.

Butterscotch, His Head Still Stuck in a Bug Trap,  Pauses on a Fence

"Eighteen days to capture a cat was...ridiculous. The challenges and threats we faced were beyond bizarre. The nightmare (yes, nightmare) is over."
-- Brandon Area Lost Animals

Some cats cannot seem to win no matter how hard they try. As a consequence, misfortune is the only traveling companion that they ever are destined to know and although they occasionally may be able to break free from its merciless shackles it is always waiting patiently for them just around the next corner like their shadows on a sunny day.

That pretty much sums up the rotten hand of cards that The Fates have doled out to a dashing orange and white tom about town named Butterscotch from Brandon in Manitoba. His first stroke of miserable luck occurred when he was cruelly abandoned to fend for himself in the street.

No one seems to know either where he came from or how long he had been homeless. Press reports likewise have not even ventured to so much as hazard a guess as to his age.

His second piece of rotten luck occurred when he accidentally got his head stuck inside a green and red plastic bug trap that was thirty centimeters in length and between ten and fifteen centimeters wide. It is not even known exactly when he became ensnared in the device.

All that has been revealed so far is that he first was spotted in the south end of town on July 23rd with the contraption on his head by a woman identified only as Colleen. Because of the color of his fur, she christened him Butterscotch and then notified Brandon Area Lost Animals (BALA).

What then followed was an eighteen-day race against the clock jointly undertaken by BALA and Brandon Animal Control in order to trap the cat and remove the device before he came to harm. Unlike so many unfortunate cats who become trapped in glue traps, jars, and discarded cans, Butterscotch apparently never was in any real danger of succumbing to either starvation or dehydration because he at least was able to both eat and drink even with the trap on his head.

It did however significantly impair his vision and, possibly, even his sense of smell and that in turn left him vulnerable to any human and animal predators intent upon doing him harm. The trap itself also was breaking apart and that presented other dangers as well.

"The problem was the plastic ring," veterinarian Jennifer Beckwith of the Grand Valley Animal Clinic (GVAC) in Brandon later explained to the Winnipeg Free Press in the second of two articles dated August 9th. (See "Butterscotch the Cat Rescued after Two and a Half Weeks, 'Recovering Well'.")"He'd stuck his head through the top of it and had managed to basically break it apart, but the ring was still hanging off his neck. Our big concern was he could have been hung up on something and strangled himself."

Without knowing how badly the trap itself had deteriorated, it is impossible to speculate on the likelihood of that happening. It is known, however, that cats who snag both conventional and elastic collars on foreign objects can suffer simply horrific injuries.

Even getting so much as a paw entangled in one of those old-fashioned identification devices can lead to disastrous consequences. (See Cat Defender posts of June 22, 2010 and May 28, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Hobson Is Forced to Wander Around Yorkshire for Months Trapped in an Elastic Collar That Steadily Was Eating Away at His Shoulder and Leg" and "Collars Turns into Death Traps for Trooper and Que but Both Are Rescued at the Eleventh Hour.")

Equipped with humane traps that were camouflaged with leaves, grass, and twigs, night vision cameras, and electronic monitors that were set up outside the traps, Toni Gramiak of BALA and about a dozen dedicated volunteers then organized a campaign to trap Butterscotch. The use of tranquilizers and nets was ruled out from the very outset as being far too dangerous.

The trappers relied upon both electronic surveillance data and sightings reported by the general public in order to determine where best to place their camouflaged traps. "We're interested in his path of travel, his behavior," Gramiak explained to the Winnipeg Free Press in the first of two articles dated August 9th. (See "To Catch a Cat: Inside the Bizarre Search for Brandon's Butterscotch.")"We need to find a spot where he's calm."

Normally, corralling Butterscotch would not have posed much of a challenge to an experienced trapper like Gramiak but it did not take long for an unidentified saboteur to throw a monkey wrench into her meticulously laid plans. Described only as a south Brandon male in either his late forties or early fifties, the subversive began his obstructionist activities by damaging and overturning her traps. He followed that up by spreading lawn clippings in front of the traps, presumably to negate the aromatic smell of the tuna juice, catnip, and pheromones that she had laid down as bait.

He additionally attempted to disrupt the trapping exercise by, inter alia, banging on his fence, churning up a ruckus with a pressurized water hose, turning on his outside lights and cameras, and focusing a floodlight on Gramiak's vehicle. "He started blatantly sabotaging right in front of me," she futilely complained to the Winnipeg Free Press in the first article dated August 9th.

Toni Gramiak and Volunteer Sandy Brown with a Camouflaged Trap

Although the police were called in on numerous occasions, they inexplicably never took any action against the culprit. If the venue had been England, he in all likelihood would have been issued an Anti-Social Behavior Order and then jailed if he had failed to comply with its stipulations.

The mere fact that he was able to get away scot-free with his obstructionist activities reveals just how little the authorities in Brandon value the lives of  cats. By contrast, if he had been engaged in actively sabotaging the efforts of emergency personnel to save the life of either an adult or a child there can be little doubt that the police would have arrested him on the spot.

Although it is by no means one-hundred per cent clear, it does not appear that the individual was acting out of anything even remotely approaching a genuine concern for Butterscotch's well-being. If, for example, he had had reason to believe that BALA and Animal Control were planning on harming him in any way his actions would have been completely justified because saving an innocent life trumps all political and legal concerns to the contrary.

That critical assessment of his motivations is based upon the conspicuous absence of anything in press reports that would tend to indicate that he ever attempted to come to Butterscotch's aid by either befriending him in any manner or leaving out food for him. Additionally, he has racked up quite a reputation over the years as being a prototypical neighbor from Hell.

For example, he has been accused of attacking residents' automobiles with air gun pellets, eggs, and canine excrement. He even has been accused of scattering nails in their driveways so as to puncture their tires.

Unlike the unidentified miscreant in Elsdorf, Nordrhein Westfalen, who back in 2009 was caught flagrante delicto putting out a Nagelbrett in order to intentionally injure Manuela Lisken's cat, this is apparently the first time that he has been caught venting his spleen on a cat. It therefore is difficult to say if he is an ailurophobe as well as a sociopath. (See Cat Defender post of June 10, 2010 entitled "Cat-Hating Gardener in Nordrhein Westfalen Is Told by the Authorities to Remove a Board of Nails from His Yard.")

"It goes on and on," is how one of his unidentified neighbors characterized his aberrant behavior to the Winnipeg Free Press in the first August 9th article cited supra.

"Nobody will look at him," another neighbor who also elected to hide behind the cloak of anonymity added in the same article. "Who wants all that (presumably, trouble)?"

The man quite obviously has his neighbors buffaloed and that in turn is likely to only embolden him to commit even more egregious affronts against them and their properties. Even Gramiak and her assistants were caught off guard by his obstructionist activities.

"Little did we know that our biggest challenge wasn't just going to be that he (Butterscotch)  had his face covered affecting his sense of smell and sight," she confessed to the Winnipeg Free Press in the second article dated August 9th.

She soon got over her initial consternation, however, and if his behavior accomplished anything it served only to strengthen her resolve. "When I have to catch an animal, it's a job I have to do," she declared to the Winnipeg Free Press in the first article dated August 9th. "It's something you can't walk away from. Not a cat that's in distress like this one. The cat has to be captured."

So, in spite of all the daunting challenges, Gramiak and her team of volunteers persevered. "It's frustrating. It's heartbreaking. It's a challenge," volunteer Laurie Unruh admitted to the Winnipeg Free Press in the first August 9th article. "All you want to do is to do the best for this cat."

Although BALA did receive widespread support from the community for its efforts on behalf of Butterscotch, that did not deter some residents from maligning both it and the volunteers. "Some people say we're nuts. It's just a cat," kindhearted volunteer and mental health worker Jo-ann (sic) Pasklivich-Holder told the Winnipeg Free Press in the first article dated August 9th. "To each his own. Everybody has a right to choose a cause. I'd Help anybody in distress, people or animals."

The doggedness of their sworn enemy did, however, force Gramiak and the volunteers to not only amend their strategies but, above all, to proceed with extreme caution at all times. "A lot of the info we had we weren't putting out there because we do believe he was monitoring the (news) sites," Gramiak later told the Winnipeg Free Press in the second August 9th article. "He was following, he was finding us, there were mysterious things going on."

Sandy Brown Monitoring the Traps Electronically

In particular, although Gramiak knew early on that Butterscotch was able to eat and drink, she did not divulge that information to the public out of a fear that either the saboteur or someone else would attempt to poison him. That information also could have been used in order to have lured him into a private snare for all sorts of other nefarious purposes.

The tug-of-war that developed between BALA and the saboteur was the third misfortune to befall Butterscotch. Although he had been doing the very best that he could in order to survive on his own and under extremely trying circumstances, he now found himself branded as an outlaw and hounded both night and day on two different fronts.

Caught in the crossfire, he was only a heartbeat away from disaster and it arrived with a vengeance on the evening of August 7th when he came within an eyelash of being crushed to death underneath the wheels of a trucker while crossing the street. Although it is difficult to say if Gramiak's aggressive trapping regimen was in any way to blame for the incident, that  is a distinct possibility.

Although to her credit she did attempt in vain to get the trucker to stop, the incident not only left her badly shaken but it also vividly drove home to her just how dangerous a game she was playing. "To watch and know I can do nothing for him...it's hard," she afterwards admitted to the Winnipeg Free Press in the first August 9th article. "If he got hit by a car right in front of me..."

Working as she does in the animal protection movement, Gramiak of all people should be acutely aware that motor vehicles do not kill cats and other animals. Au contraire, it is precisely motorists that are to blame and they commit their dastardly deeds intentionally and with impunity.

All the sleepless nights spent by Gramiak and the volunteers finally paid off at 7 a.m. on August 9th when Butterscotch unwittingly strolled into one of their camouflaged traps. The winning combination of various lures that had been tried throughout this exercise turned out to be tuna, two kinds of cat food, and catnip. A trail of tuna juice that led up the path to the trap also proved to be simply too enticing for him to ignore.

With the successful denouement of their trapping campaign, everyone associated with the effort finally was able to breathe a collective sigh of relief. "Eighteen days to capture a cat was...ridiculous," BALA stated August 10th in an untitled article posted on its Facebook page. "The challenges and threats we faced were beyond bizarre. The nightmare (yes, nightmare) is over."

While that doubtlessly was true as far as BALA and Animal Control were concerned, Butterscotch's latest nightmare was just beginning and that constituted his fourth stroke of misfortune. This latest installment of misery began when he was taken into custody by Animal Control and transported to GVAC where he was anesthetized by Beckwith and the trap removed. While she was at it, she vaccinated him for rabies, distemper, and leukemia and gave him a good dousing for fleas, worms, and mites.

Despite being severely handicapped by the presence of the bug trap, he was neither emaciated nor dehydrated. Best of all, he tested negative for both FIV and FeLv.

"He's recovering well from the ordeal," the practitioner told the Winnipeg Free Press in the second article dated August 9th. "He's of course a little bit lighter now that he doesn't have a bug trap on his head."

As soon as he had recovered from the anesthesia, Butterscotch was remanded to the city pound for three days. That was necessitated by the twin realities that no one ever came forward to reclaim him and he was neither wearing a collar, tattooed, nor carrying around inside of him an implanted microchip.

Following that terrifying ordeal, he next was sloughed off onto Funds for Furry Friends where he was placed in foster care so that he could be socialized for eventual adoption. Not surprisingly after have been cruelly robbed of his freedom and bandied about like a Flying Dutchman, Butterscotch initially found the confinement to be a harrowing experience.

"For the first week in foster care, this traumatized kitty was frozen in fear," BALA stated August 25th in an untitled article posted on its Facebook page. "He would lash out at anything that startled him, and had an intense fear of hands and growled if any human got dangerously close to him."

Butterscotch Tried to Run but He Could Not Get Rid of the Bug Trap

Through the judicious use of treats, patience, and chemicals such as Feliway Diffuser, Feliway Spray, and Pet Naturals Calming Formula for Cats, Butterscotch's foster mother finally was able to wear down his resistance. BALA described the process as follows in the August 25th article:

"With time, his safe distance was down to inches. His need for affection and his fear of hands created a dilemma. To get that needed first human contact, treats and kibble were placed under the human's leg. Butterscotch pushed his head in for the food and he melted. He collapsed and purred, rubbing his body against his foster mom's."

As wonderful as all of that may appear au premier coup d'oeil, it does not in any way alter the sobering reality that it, like everything else heretofore in Butterscotch's short life, is destined to be transitory. That is because it is unlikely that his foster mother is going to adopt him and that in turns means that he is going to be not only uprooted again but, far more importantly, deprived of the care of the one person that he has come to trust.

Even placing him in the right home is not going to be an easy task. "It's got to be the perfect family because a lot of people might want him just because he's Butterscotch," Gramiak told the Winnipeg Free Press in the second August 9th article.

"Obviously, he's become famous," she candidly acknowledged earlier in the first Winnipeg Free Press article dated August 9th. "A cat wearing a hat."

To hear BALA tell it, however, Butterscotch's socialization is a done deal and his future as a pet cat is assured. In the August 25th Facebook article the organization gushed:

"Two weeks after coming into care, Butterscotch revealed his true self. He is a playful big kitten who loves to play fetch for treats. He loves human affection, rolls around on his trusted human's lap and he gives a lot of purrful head bumps."

That possibly could be the case but a far more likely scenario is that he has succumbed to the Stockholm Syndrome. After all, he is in jail and has to not only sing for his supper but his survival as well.

Much more importantly, it quite obviously was not necessary to anesthetize him in order to either cut off the plastic bug trap or to vaccinate him. Both BALA and Beckwith had a far more sinister motive in mind when they chose that course of action.

In particular, they were unable to resist the overpowering temptation to sterilize him and that was the fifth stroke of bad luck to befall him. Although Gramiak simply could be a sterilization fanatic, it would appear that her marked disdain for his philandering played a role in her decision to have Beckwith put an abrupt end to his love life.

"It's quite the relationship. But I think he has other girlfriends she doesn't know about," she said of his courtship of one female in the first Winnipeg Free Press article dated August 9th. "He's such a Casanova."

If there is any validity to that assumption, that would put her thinking on a par with that of Debbie Schultz, a former vice president of the Key West SPCA, who nearly succeeded in sterilizing the world famous polydactyls at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum out of existence. In her case, it was a tom named Ivan whose street corner romantic escapades drove her over the edge and launched her on her ruinous ball-whacking campaign.

"I saw Ivan many times loose. Ivan is a very unneutered, very macho male cat, and in each case, he had one of the street cats pinned down," she indignantly complained back in December of 2006. "We have an ordinance that says a nuisance cat can be removed."(See Cat Defender post of January 9, 2007 entitled "Papa Hemingway's Polydactyl Cats Face New Threats from Both the USDA and Their Caretakers.")

Simply put, some individuals cannot abide the sight of any cat deriving so much as a moment of pleasure out of this vale of tears called life. The same blatant hypocrisy abounds in Anglo-American politics in that it is perfectly acceptable for various religious, ethnic, and racial groups to behave like the royal families of Europe by intermarrying for both profit and power but any randy old bugger who gets caught doing any unauthorized dipping in what is deemed to be an inappropriate honeypot is immediately pilloried.

That is not meant to imply that Butterscotch may not go on to have a longer, healthier, and even happier life as a castrated and domesticated tom than he would have had living on the mean streets of Brandon but that is far from being guaranteed. Just because a homeless cat is able to adjust to one situation does not necessarily mean that it will accept being uprooted and transferred to an entirely different living arrangement.

Butterscotch's Fate Is Now Sealed

That was the hard lesson that Joan Wiley of St. Catharines in Ontario learned firsthand earlier this spring when she unsuccessfully attempted to fob off on a friend a black and white tom with yellow eyes named Merlin that she had somewhat domesticated. For various reasons but principally owing to the bullying of another cat, the experiment turned out to be an unmitigated disaster and Merlin had to be returned to Wiley.

"My good intentions to find Merlin a loving permanent home had robbed him of the joy of life," she wrote in a guest column for The Globe and Mail of Toronto on July 6th. (See "For Merlin the Feral Cat, a Spell Indoors Was Hell.")"My main concern had been for his physical safety, but I badly miscued on his emotional needs."

At last report, Merlin had resumed his happy-go-lucky existence as a combination indoor and outdoor cat but primarily the latter. As for Wiley, her misadventures with him were not a total loss in that she apparently has learned a valuable lesson from her mistakes.

"My experience with Merlin reminded me again of the folly of making assumptions about the needs and lives of humans and non-humans alike, especially those who can't speak for themselves," she stated in The Globe and Mail article. "In this diverse world, we should proceed with extreme caution when we try to cram the proverbial square peg into the highly overrated and one-size-fits-all round hole."

It is nothing short of appalling that individuals such as Gramiak, Schultz, and others like them who work with cats are so blinded by ambition and besotted by dogma that they are totally incapable of recognizing the existence of individual circumstances, unique histories, different personalities, and varying needs. Such pigheadedness is, in and of itself, arguably the most egregious form of ailurophobia imaginable in that it serves only to perpetuate the naked abuse and exploitation of the species.

Furthermore, along with domestication and sterilization also come a myriad of additional concerns and responsibilities that whomever ultimately gains custody of Butterscotch is going to have to sooner or later address. In particular, such cats are prone to obesity, diabetes mellitus, and bone cancer.

If they are cooped up exclusively indoors, they never receive the exercise and mental stimulation that they require in order to stay both physically and psychologically fit. Plus, indoor environments are hazardous to their health. (See Cat Defender posts of August 22, 2007 and October 19, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Indoor Cats Are Dying from Diabetes, Hyperthyroidism, and Various Toxins in the Home" and "Smokers Are Killing Their Cats, Dogs, Birds, and Infants by Continuing to Light Up in Their Presence.")

For Gramiak and others to ignore these concerns is nothing short of dishonest. Moreover, their attitude demonstrates an appalling disrespect for the nature, health, and happiness of cats.

In his 1922 seminal work, The Tiger in the House, Carl Van Vechten unriddled the sterilization conundrum as follows:

"But it has become the general custom, except for those who keep kings for breeding purposes, to alter these toms, so that they grow into large, affectionate, and lazy animals, who sleep a good deal, and are generally picturesque but not very active. These altered toms are generally the favorites as pets. Personally, I am more interested in cats who retain their natural fervor."

Even in saying that much he misses the boat by a mile when he implies that unaltered toms cannot be gentle, loving, and extremely well mannered toward their owners. Also, some of them exhibit little or no interest in either the opposite sex or in roaming and as a consequence it is senseless to castrate them.

For better or worse, Butterscotch's fate was sealed the moment that he wandered into Gramiak's cleverly disguised trap and there is not anything that anyone from the general public can do for him now. Hopefully, he will be able to find a measure of contentment and happiness somewhere down the road but even that depends in large part upon what type of guardian that Funds for Furry Friends foists upon him.

The sad reality of the situation is that his life no longer belongs to him and that is the sixth and by far worst coup du sort to have befallen him. Given what is known about those diabolical monsters who strut around on two legs with their long noses poked high in the air and running off at the mouth, being forced to live down at heel, under the thumb, and according to their whims is the scariest fate that ever could happen to anyone, cat or individual.

Photos: Moggies (Butterscotch on a fence), Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press (Gramiak and Brown with trap, Brown watching the monitors, and Butterscotch on the run), and BALA (Butterscotch in a trap).

The Magnificent Clark

"I had a hard time wrapping my brain around why this happened and how it happened. I just feel really sad that this innocent, sweet animal was hunted down and shot in a yard where he felt safe."
-- Deb Webb

No one seems to either know or, for that matter, care very much about Clark's past. Based upon his friendly demeanor and total lack of fear of humans, however, it is rather safe to conclude that he at one time enjoyed the comforts and security of a permanent home.

That was a long time ago in that it is known that the five-to-eight-year-old black and white tom with long, elegant white whiskers and pale-green eyes had been forced for much of his adult life to eke out an existence on the violent and forbidding streets of the small Maine town of Gorham, eighteen kilometers west of Portland. As far as it has been revealed, the only material assistance that he received during that time came from Deb Webb of Maple Ridge Road who had fed him for the past three years.

Even that act of kindness still forced him to rely upon his own resources when it came to weathering Gorham's long, cold, and snowy winters, eluding both human and animal predators, and persevering through injuries and sicknesses without the benefit of competent veterinary care. Plus, he had to cope on a daily basis with the psychological loneliness and social isolation that accompanies being homeless and penniless and that is an especially difficult row to hoe for any cat that lives in such a cold-hearted and violent capitalist dystopia as the United States.

Despite having all the stars aligned against him, Clark nevertheless somehow persevered and even to a certain extent thrived on adversity. Malheureusement, neither courage, nobility of soul, nor the ability to withstand profound suffering are any match for either the malicious lies of an inveterate cat-hater or the murderous desires of a bloodthirsty cop.

That terrifying fact of life in present-day, police state America was brought home to Clark with a vengeance on the evening of August 20th after he allegedly became involved in some sort of a physical altercation with an unidentified seven-year-old girl. The girl's father, whose identity likewise has been shielded from public scrutiny by the obliging capitalist media, in turn telephoned the Gorham Police Department (GPD) complaining that Clark either had scratched or bitten his daughter.

That in itself was a highly dubious charge to levy against Clark in the first place in that scratch and bite wounds usually are readily distinguishable. Secondly, a far more likely scenario is that it was precisely the child who either had attacked or molested Clark in some fashion because homeless cats are not in the habit of approaching strangers, let alone assaulting them.

Thirdly, the man should have been doing a far better job of minding his young daughter. If he had been willing from the outset to have devoted so much as a fraction of the time that he since has invested in falsely maligning Clark to fulfilling that solemn responsibility this tragic episode never would have transpired in the first place.

As malicious and patently unfair as his initial accusation was, the man did not stop there but instead outdid himself by telling the police that Clark not only was limping but rabid as well. The first allegation is easily disposed of in that Clark most likely was victimized sometime in the past by a hit-and-run motorist and that accounts for his limp.

It is not, after all, anything out of the ordinary for outdoor cats to have some sort of mobility impairment. Moreover, there is not any correlation whatsoever between a limp and rabies and absolutely no one except either an inveterate cat-hater or a bloody fool ever would make such an asinine connection.

Much more to the point, neither civilians, cops, nor even veterinarians are capable of making an on-the-spot, in-the-field diagnosis of rabies. That can only be accomplished through either trapping and quarantining an animal so that it can be observed over an extended period of time for any outward symptoms of the malady or by killing it and analyzing tissues cut out of its brain.

An x-ray Details the Damage Done to Clark's Front Legs

Regrettably, Clark could not speak up for himself and as a consequence the Animal Control officer who arrived on the scene at 7 p.m. took the blatant lies of Clark's accusers to be the gospel truth. Although the thoroughly dishonest capitalist media have refused to publicly divulge his name, he is identified on the GPD's web site as its very own Paul Dubay who also doubles as a traffic cop.

With it rapidly growing dark outside, Dubay quickly abandoned his half-hearted effort to trap Clark and instead radioed Lieutenant Christopher Sanborn, who serves as second in command to outgoing Chief of Police Ronald Shepard, in order to request that a death squad be dispatched to hunt down and execute on the spot the totally innocent cat. In support of his case, Dubay not only alleged that Clark also had attempted to bite him but he even topped the father and daughter team when it comes to telling whoppers by furthermore claiming that he also was staggering, weeping, and vomiting.

Two unidentified police officers promptly arrived at the killing field and one of them wasted no time by assaulting Clark with one or more blasts from a sixteen-gauge shotgun that was loaded with pellets. Assuming that the triggerman was not either any of the GPD's four sergeants, three detectives, or pair of school crossing guards, he surely was one of the following nine officers: Robert Henckel, Brent Frank, Todd Gagnon, David Bruni, Dean Hannon, Ted Hatch, Michael Brown, Stephen Hinkley, and Steven Rappold. It seems highly unlikely that the department's tenth uniformed officer, Chelsea Emmons, did the shooting.

"After some discussion, they (Dubay and his unidentified supervisor) had some concern there was a rabid cat in the neighborhood that they were unable to capture," Sanborn told the Portland Press Herald on September 4th. (See "Stray Cat Recovering from Shooting by Officer Who Suspected Rabies.")"They decided the best way to deal with it so no one else was harmed was to shoot the cat."

Although the blast had broken bones in both of Clark's front legs, he nonetheless was able to somehow make it to the safety of a nearby wooded area and that doubtlessly saved his life because his attackers were hellbent upon eradicating him from the face of the earth. Toward that end, they pursued him for "an extended period of time" that night and the following day according to Sanborn.

"It leaped up in the air and took off," Sanborn later told the American Journal of Westbrook on September 11th. (See "'Super-Cat' Saga Touching Hearts.")

The not only unjust and barbaric but asininely stupid behavior exhibited by both Dubay and the GPD in this utterly outrageous example of animal cruelty raises a myriad of vitally important questions that need to be addressed. First of all, although police officers are allowed under Maine law to execute animals that they suspect of having rabies that is far from being a desirable policy.

Rather, such animals should be humanely trapped and taken to a veterinarian for examination. That is the only way that such a determination can be made without unjustly killing totally innocent animals.

Secondly, an Animal Control officer should not be a police officer as well. Simply put, most policemen have neither the prerequisite intelligence, training, temperament, patience, nor compassion required in order to properly attend to cats and other animals in a humane and just fashion.

In this particular case, Dubay's gross incompetence is nothing short of criminal. "This may be the first time I've ever heard of a police officer responding to help an Animal Control officer with a cat," Eric Sakach of the Humane Society of the United States told the Portland Press Herald."Animal Control officers should be trained and have the equipment to properly trap a cat."

Clark and Jeana Roth

Apparently, Dubay was not only bone-lazy but so mindlessly stupid that he attempted to grab Clark with his bare hands as opposed to using a trap. Otherwise, he is simply lying about Clark attacking him.

As any fool knows, a humane trap, the proper bait, and unlimited amounts of both patience and time are required in order to successfully apprehend a cat. Animal Control personnel and police officers are, on the other hand, by training and personality quick workers in that it only takes them a second or two in order to reduce and eliminate complex, vexing, and time-consuming problems to their lowest common denominator by emptying their revolvers in the direction of cats, dogs, and individuals.

Such a mindset additionally spares them the onerous tasks of either doing any thinking or breaking so much as a sweat. Many of them in fact talk and behave as if they have the intelligence quotient of a fifteen-year-old juvenile delinquent.

By contrast, earlier in August it took Toni Gramiak and the volunteers from Brandon Area Lost Animals (BALA) in Manitoba eighteen days in order to successfully corral a cat named Butterscotch who had gotten his head trapped in a bug trap. (See Cat Defender post of September 6, 2014 entitled "Butterscotch Is Finally Freed from a Bug Trap but His Deliverance Has Come at an Awfully High Price That He Will Be Repaying for the Remainder of His Days.")

On that occasion, she and her colleagues used various baits, electronic and human monitors of the traps, and tons of patience. Above all, neither she nor the volunteers were foolish enough to attempt to grab Butterscotch with their hands.

"To the people who thought they could catch him by hand, be thankful you didn't get the chance," BALA wrote August 25th in an untitled article posted on its Facebook page. "For the first week in foster care, this traumatized kitty was frozen in fear. He would lash out at anything that startled him, had an intense fear of hands and growled if any human got dangerously close to him."

The avowed willingness of both the girl and Dubay to get so close to Clark also calls into question the veracity of their assertions that he not only was feral but, more importantly, that he had rabies. First of all, the vast majority of homeless cats are unapproachable. Secondly, no one ever would go near a cat that they honestly suspected of having rabies.

Also, by electing to gun down Clark in Webb's yard, the GPD placed in jeopardy the lives of other cats and residents living in the area as well. "I mean, you (sic) could've done a little bit better, extensive job of searching for it, or put a trap out to search for it the next day, or something," Stephanie Roberts, who lives near where Clark was shot, astutely pointed out to WMTV of Portland on September 5th. (See "Cat Thought to Be Rabid Shot by Police, Survives.")

As for Clark's accuser, she never was treated for exposure to the rabies virus and that further undermines both her and her father's stories because normally in cases of this sort post-exposure prophylaxis is immediately commenced and continues over an extended fourteen-day period. The cops and Dubay likewise never believed so much as an iota of their own propaganda and lies because less than twenty-four hours later they gave up attempting to both trap and kill Clark.

As for Clark, he somehow managed to survive the cop's shotgun blast and subsequently was successfully trapped by Webb four days later on August 24th. He then was bandied about first to the Animal Refuge League for Greater Portland (ARLGP) in Westbrook, seven kilometers removed from Gorham, and then to an unidentified veterinarian fifty-six kilometers away in Lewiston before finally being returned to the former where he remains to this day.

Clark Rests in His Cage at ARLGP

It never has been explained where Clark spent the intervening days but more than likely he was with Webb. That assumption is based upon her own admission that she feared he would be killed if she immediately turned him over to ARLGP. Presumably, his deteriorating state of health prompted her to have a change of heart and to take a chance upon the shelter.

It additionally is unclear if she was at home at the time of the shooting. If not, she surely learned of it shortly thereafter and likely was on the lookout for Clark, even if she initially might have feared that he had been killed.

There can be little doubt, however, that the evil machinations of all those involved in this sordid affair have left her badly shaken. "I had a really hard time wrapping my brain around why this happened and how it happened," she explained to the Portland Press Herald in the article cited supra. "I just feel really sad that this innocent, sweet animal was hunted down and shot in a yard where he felt safe."

The first order of business at ARLGP was to quarantine Clark in a cage for ten days so that he could be observed for any symptoms of rabies. To the surprise of absolutely no one with so much as a scintilla of intelligence, that proved not to be the case otherwise he would have been liquidated on the spot.

Au contraire, rabies is extremely rare in cats and, according to statistics compiled by the Portland Press Herald, only eight such cases have been confirmed in Maine since January of 2010. Moreover, the last person in Maine to have been infected with rabies transmitted by any animal occurred way back in 1937.

That has not deterred the sworn enemies of the species, such as ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and the federal government, from falsely branding cats as the number one public menace when it comes to spreading rabies. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta published a scurrilous report in the July 17, 2013 online edition of Zoonoses and Public Health (volume sixty-one, issue four, pages 290-296) entitled "Rabies Prevention and Management of Cats in the Context of Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Release Programmes"(sic) wherein the authors called for not only the outlawing of TNR but the roundup and en masse extermination of all homeless cats.

"We didn't think it was okay to have (homeless) dogs, but we think it's okay to create artificial cat colonies where they're exposed to wildlife that can transmit rabies," Charles E. Rupprecht of the CDC groused indignantly to USA Today on August 18, 2013. (See "Feral Cat Colonies Could Pose Rabies Risk, CDC Says.")

Rupprecht's colleague at the CDC, Jesse D. Blanton, furthermore claimed that three-hundred cats are reported to be rabid each year in the United States and that they accordingly are to blame for sixteen per cent of all individuals that require treatment after being suspected of having been exposed to the virus.

First of all and as the simply horrific abuse meted out to Clark has amply demonstrated, there is a huge difference between being suspected of having rabies and actually being infected with the virus. Secondly, individuals who come into contact with cats are inadvertently scratched and bitten all the time. As a result, they may sometimes even undergo rabies treatment as a precautionary measure but that certainly does not mean that the cats were in fact rabid.

On the contrary, there has not been a confirmed cat-to-human transmission of rabies in nearly forty years. In fact, if there were so much as an iota of truth to the CDC's outrageous claims the country would be overrun with a rabies epidemic.

Cindy

The veracity of the study is further called into question by not only the overt biases of the authors themselves but also by the CDC's lies about who actually conducted the research and authored the report. For instance, in addition to Rupprecht and Blanton, the consortium of authors allegedly also included M. Levin, Allison D. Roebling, and D. Johnson of the CDC. Besides them, D. Slate, who works for both the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) as well as its designated death squad, Wildlife Services, and none other than George Fenwick of the ultra cat-hating American Bird Conservancy (ABC) also put in their two cents' worth.

It afterwards was revealed, however, that the study actually was prepared and written by Roebling and Johnson, a pair of unpaid college students and not CDC staffers. In addition to being biased and dishonest, that shows up the CDC to be both cheap as well as a naked exploiter of students. (See District of Columbia Health Examiner, November 5, 2013, "'CDC Study' on Cats Actually Done by Students.")

Even more important than that it reveals that the CDC now has joined the ranks of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Wildlife Services, APHIS, the National Park Service, the United States Forest Service, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Pentagon, and other agencies in the feds' all-out war on cats. (See Cat Defender post of August 7, 2014 entitled "The National Park Service Racks Up a Major Victory by Expelling the Plum Beach Cats but It Is Thwarted in Its Burning Desire to Dance a Merry Little Jig on Their Graves.")

"This is fearmongering, and it can have disastrous consequences for cats," Becky Robinson of Alley Cat Allies pointed out in an August 15, 2013 press release. (See "Alley Cat Allies Denounces Biased Rabies Review that Calls for Eradicating Cats.")"Frankly, I am flummoxed that the American Bird Conservancy is included on a rabies prevention study. It also makes no sense that the review includes a totally unrelated section on feral cats and wildlife."

Whereas it is difficult to establish a direct causal connection between the CDC's and the ABC's blatant lies on the one hand and the GPD's gunning down of Clark on the other hand, there can be do disputing that the mere mentioning of rabies frightens some otherwise rational individuals out of their skulls. "It was alarming to think we had a rabid animal in the neighborhood," uninformed and clueless Gail Platts of Maple Ridge Road told the American Journal in the article cited supra.

ARLGP eventually got around to looking after Clark's gunshot wounds and that could not have come a minute too soon. "He was in rough shape, could barely walk," the charity's Patsy Murphy informed WGME-TV of Portland on September 4th. (See "Stray Cat Suffers in Woods after Being Shot by Police.")

"He was outside for four days after he was shot before he was brought to us," Murphy's colleague, Jeana Roth, added to the Portland Press Herald. "Who knows what kind of pain he was in?"

At last report, ARLGP was closely monitoring his condition in the hope that the shattered bones in his legs will heal on their own. If not, he will require surgery.

Surgery might also be called for in order to not only repair his limp but also to remove the lead pellets. If not removed in a timely fashion they ultimately could prove to be not only toxic but possibly even fatal.

For example, on August 29th an unknown and still at large assailant shot Constance Große's nine-year-old white cat, Cindy, in the stomach with an air rifle as she lay stretched out on the terrace of her mother-in-law's house in the Dütekamp development in the Himbergen section of Uelzen in Niedersachsen, ninety-two kilometers south of Hamburg. In yet still another utterly revolting example of veterinary malpractice, the unidentified practitioner incorrectly diagnosed Cindy to be suffering from a bite wound.

Peggy

When her condition did not improve, she was forced to undergo emergency surgery on September 2nd and on that occasion the projectile finally was found and removed. Tragically, by that time it already was too late and she did not survive.

Although the surgery and the anesthesia doubtlessly contributed to her death, it also is believed that the lead pellet poisoned her system. If she had been properly diagnosed and the projectile removed in a timely manner she in all likelihood still would be alive today.

The senseless murder of her beloved cat has not only deeply disturbed Große and her children but prompted her to demand that the police apprehend the assailant. "Wer tut so etwas und schießt in unserem Siedlungsgebiet mit einem Luftgewehr auf Katzen?" she asked readers of the Allgemeine Zeitung Uelzen on September 6th. (See "Tödlicher Schuss auf Cindy.")"Damit möchte ich erreichen, dass derjenige, der geschossen und damit gegen das Tierschutzgesetz verstoßen hat, ermittelt wird."

For the time being, however, Clark is persevering as well as could be expected under the circumstances. "Clark's doing well. He's receiving vet care and treatment. He's resting comfortably and certainly recuperating," Roth related to the Bangor Daily News on September 4th. (See "Stray Cat Survives Shotgun Blast from Gorham Officer Who Thought Feline Was Rabid.")"Animals are certainly resilient, and Clark certainly is a strong boy."

Although it is not known what Webb calls him, ARLGP has temporarily named him in honor of Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent. It also is rather revealing that the charity's description of his personality is on all fours with that of Webb and therefore totally at odds with the outrageous lies spread about him by the father and daughter team, Dubay, and the GPD.

"He's a lovebug. Everyone here has definitely rallied around him," Murphy declared to WMTV in the article cited supra. "We love his name, Clark, it really speaks to his Superman capabilities. And as you can see, he's a dream boy."

Depending upon how his health progresses, Clark is scheduled to be put up for adoption almost any day now and Webb has announced her intention to be first in line for that honor. The competition is expected to be steep, however, in that at least a dozen or so other individuals have expressed a similar interest in adding him to their homes. The petit fait that she demurred from doing so for so very long also could adversely affect her suit.

Regardless of where he ultimately winds up, Clark's rapid transformation from a rough sleeper and an outlaw into a domiciled and beloved cat has been nothing short of breathtaking. It nevertheless is appalling that it nearly cost him his life before both friends and foes alike belatedly realized not only that he was innocent of the accusations levied against him but, much more importantly, that he was entitled to be allowed to go on living.

That is about the only positive development to have come out of all of the naked abuse and profound suffering heaped upon Clark's tiny head in that none of those involved have seemingly learned a blessed thing from their colossal mistakes. First of all, there is the GPD which claims to have opened an internal investigation into the conduct of both Dubay and the triggerman. "We want to leave no stone unturned," Sanborn swore with, presumably, a straight face to the American Journal.

By that he undoubtedly means that his department is going to pull out all the stops in order to whitewash the conduct of all those involved. Quite obviously, since the GPD has categorically refused to even publicly identify either Dubay or those officers involved in this lawless and unprovoked assassination attempt upon Clark's life, there is absolutely no chance that any of them ever will be disciplined.

Barry Accorti

Besides, the shooting took place more than a month ago and it certainly does not take that length of time in order to conduct an internal investigation. A cover-up and a whitewash, on the other hand, require a good deal more time and effort.

If truth, justice, and public accountability mattered in Gorham, Dubay, the two uniformed officers, their supervisor, and Sanborn as well would be not only immediately fired but prosecuted under the anti-cruelty statutes as well.  Neither of those recourses are about to be followed, however, in that the cover-up is so extensive that it extends to the seven officials who make up the Town Council as well as to city manager David Cole, none of whom have had the decency and compassion to utter so much as a peep in protest.

Sanborn, who is being groomed to assume Shepard's duties in November, has behaved throughout this affair much like a piece of dingy laundry flapping in the breeze. "We're currently looking into the situation and obviously want to ensure the proper procedures were followed," he vacuously gassed to WGME-TV in the article cited supra.

On that same date he is quoted in the Portland Press Herald as candidly acknowledging his abysmal ignorance as to the protocol to be followed in dealing with animals suspected of being rabid but who cannot be immediately apprehended. Consequently, there is not any conceivable way that either he or his officers could possibly follow the dictates of the law if they do not even know what they are in the first place.

As moronic as that may sound to the uninitiated, it is simply the way that all cops operate. Absolutely none of them give so much as a rat's ass about the law, issues of right and wrong, and saving lives. Acting in their self-anointed roles as arresting officers, judges, jurymen, and street corner executioners, they recognize no higher authority and will not under any circumstances accept any constraints placed upon their exercise of power and that applies to how they deal with individuals as well as cats and other animals.

To make matters worse, the GPD's anti-feline agenda enjoys widespread support outside of Gorham. For example, Sheila Pinette of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Augusta has endorsed Sanborn's clarion call for all Maine residents to not only rat out all homeless cats to the police but to refrain from both feeding and handling them.

That draconian policy also has been wholeheartedly endorsed by none other than the ARLGP. "We hope that the message here is that if you have a stray animal in your neighborhood, use your shelter as a resource," Roth pontificated to the Bangor Daily News in the article cited supra.

Her supervisor, Murphy, is even more of a brownnoser and a suck-up to authority. "We're happy to work with the Animal Control officer and community to get strays into shelters," she pledged to WGME-TV. "We can get them spayed and neutered, and we can get them current on vaccinations."

Her bonhomie also extends to the GPD. "We had a meeting with the Gorham Police Department and we talked about communications and working together," she disclosed to WGME-TV.

Most outrageous of all, to withhold food, water, shelter, veterinary care, and simple acts of compassion and kindness from homeless cats is nothing short of barbaric and anyone who advocates for such a perverse agenda should be stripped naked and publicly horsewhipped. Secondly, Dubay has so amply demonstrated his complete incompetence as an Animal Control officer that anyone who cares so much as one whit about cats would have to be a complete idiot to rat out any of them to him.

Thirdly, as far as Sanborn and his highly-paid and trigger-happy goons are concerned, dealing with cats even remotely suspected of being homeless begins and ends with blasts from a shotgun. Accordingly, just as it would be utterly foolish to subject a blind man to a test of colors, it is ridiculous to allow the GPD within a mile of a cat.

Fourthly, the inveterate liars, fraudsters, and buttlickers at ARLPG know as well as everyone else that just about all cats that enter the front doors of shelters leave by the back doors in black plastic trash bags. That is not only true of all those that are suspected of being homeless, but the vast majority of domesticated and preeminently adoptable cats as well.

Pumpkin

"This is not a typical way for a cat to be brought to us," Roth told the Portland Press Herald in regard to Clark's gunshot wounds. "We never want to see a situation like this again."

Unless she is joshing, that can only be interpreted as meaning that she prefers to have cats delivered to her upon silver platters. That way she and her colleagues can whack them with jabs of sodium pentobarbital all the while maintaining that they are doing both them and the community a valuable public service.

"The mission of the Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland is to provide temporary care and shelter for stray, abandoned, and relinquished animals, and to place as many as possible into responsible and caring homes," the organization declares on its web site. "Each animal is given the time it needs to find a home regardless of its age, color or medical condition until the time it is reunited with its family or adopted into a loving and responsible family."

Specifically, the organization claims that it takes in more than four-thousand animals each year and that more than half of them are homeless. Conspicuously omitted from its highfalutin rhetoric is any mention of its kill-rate and without that vitally important piece of information intake data are not only meaningless but patently dishonest.

It additionally is not anywhere sufficient for ARLGP to merely declare that it provides its inmates with veterinary care. It must go further and reveal exactly how many animals that it successfully treats as well as the number that it either intentionally kills or allows to die through malpractice and niggardliness. In that respect, Webb's fear that the shelter would kill off Clark is perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against it.

It also is more  than a bit troubling that the shelter, located at 449 Stroudwater Street, is only eight-tenths of a mile removed from Westbrook High School (WHS) at 125 Stroudwater Street which serves as the home away from home for its elderly ginger-colored mascot, Simba. In particular, the shelter's close proximity to it makes it all too convenient should either WHS or Simba's owner, Eileen Shutts, decide to employ it in order to prematurely snuff out his life.

Even as things now stand, he never has been fully appreciated. (See Cat Defender post of May 19, 2014 entitled "Even after Fourteen Years of Faithful Companionship and Exemplary Service, Teachers, Students, and Administrators at Westbrook High School Remain Clueless as to Simba's Intrinsic Value.")

On its web site the organization also fails to make any mention of either TNR or sanctuaries. It apparently does place some barn cats with farmers through its Country Kitties Program but the exact number is not specified. It therefore is difficult to see how that it possibly could be operating anything other than a mass extermination factory without making use of these other alternatives. It is, after all, a foregone conclusion that it is not about to invest the time and resources required in order to socialize for adoption every homeless cat that passes through its portals.

Fifthly, all of Gorham's simply outrageous polices for dealing with cats are not only inhumane but at odds with TNR. There are sans doute drawbacks to such an approach but until something better and more humane comes along it is an acceptable compromise.

Trumping all of those concerns is the simply grotesque lie spread by ARLGP, the GPD, and others that there is a discernible difference between homeless and domesticated cats. "Many people draw a distinction between their pet cats and cats that live outside, but they are really the same," Elizabeth Putsche, who along with her husband, Jason, has spent five years photographing homeless cats, told This Dish Is Vegan on September 11th. (See "Husband and Wife Team Document Feral Cat Colonies Across the Country.")"The care and compassion we give our animals at home should be extended to these cats, even if we can't pet them. Each has a personality and individuality and each has a story to tell."

Snuffy with Her Roommate Pebbles

Applied to the human race, the draconian policies advocated by ARLGP, the GPD, Dubay, and Pinette would sanction the gunning down in the street of not only the impecunious but orphans as well. As is the case with all forms of abuse, the starting point always is the lies spread by the elites who either control or have access to the communications channels.

"There are a lot of misconceptions about community cats," Putsche goes on to say. "We want people to see them as they truly are: independent, healthy, loved, and thriving outdoors."

That is the absolute last thing that their publicly declared enemies in Gorham and Westbrook ever want the hoi polloi to see. As far as they are concerned, the only good cat is either a dead one or one that has been denatured and brought to heel like a dog. C'est-à-dire, the entire so-called animal protection establishment is, for the most part, a huge racket that is run by and for the benefit of its members and the political elites that they serve. Consequently, it is only by either accident or as a fundraising ploy that the pressing needs of the animals ever are served.

Animal Control officers are by far the worst of a bad lot in that the manner in which Dubay treated Clark was merely par for the course when it comes to how they deal with cats. Whether their modus operandi is to either kill them in the field with lethal injections and bullets to the head or to deliver them to shelters and veterinarians to liquidate, Animal Control officers operate in a shadowy world where both their hideous crimes as well as the bodies of their victims remain hidden from public view.

There is a discernible pattern to their crimes, however, in that most of them originate with private citizens who lodge complaints with them against cats. All of these individuals are inveterate cat-haters and a good percentage of them are either ornithologists, wildlife biologists, the brainwashed dupes of PETA, or members of the federal bureaucracy. Moreover, they are seldom, if ever, publicly identified and held liable in any way for their actions. Worst still, Animal Control officers take their malicious and totally unfounded lies at face value.

For example, on July 6th of last year, Debbie Patsos's ten-year-old black cat Peggy escaped from her residence in the Tampa suburb of Land O'Lakes and took up refuge in Casey McCarthy's garage, four doors down the street. When he discovered Peggy's presence he promptly ratted her out to Pasco County Animal Services which dispatched an unidentified Animal Control officer with eight years of experience on the job who in turn killed her on the spot with, presumably, a jab of sodium pentobarbital.

When asked by the dispatcher if the cat was in imminent danger of dying, McCarthy replied, "Yeah...it probably won't make it until tomorrow as far as I'm concerned," according to a July 12th broadcast on WTSP-TV of Tampa. (See "Pasco Investigates Lethal Injection of Family Cat.")"It's probably going to go into shock and die."

Actually, Peggy was in perfect health save for the fact that she had been born with only three paws. "She was our family member. She had a handicap which gave her character to us," Patsos told WTSP-TV earlier on July 10th. (See "Pasco County Kills Family Cat Before It Arrives at Shelter.")"It did not mean she was unadoptable or unlovable. It made her more lovable to us."

In a feeble ploy designed to excuse his own culpability, McCarthy later pleaded ignorance as to how both Animal Control officers and shelters operate. "I'm beyond mad," he told WTSP-TV in the July 10th article. "First off, if anyone said, 'If the shelter takes it, they're going to euthanize it,' I would have said, 'Never mind'."

Even more telling the Animal Control officer informed McCarthy that Peggy might be killed; he simply did not mention that he was planning on doing the dirty deed that very moment and inside his garage. Moreover, McCarthy's story has been further undermined by the fact that he has been identified elsewhere on the web as an animal lover who in the past has rescued cats. He therefore does not have a valid excuse for ratting out Peggy to the knackers.

Elmo

"I'm angry now, and I want justice for her," Patsos stormed to WTSP-TV in the July 12th article cited supra. "I don't want this to happen to someone else's cat."

She is justifiably furious at Animal Control but McCarthy is even more at fault. "I'm blown away. I made the call, I tracked them down in an effort to get an injured cat help," he admitted to WTSP-TV on July 12th. "I didn't get help. I sent it to its death."

On June 10th of last year an unidentified woman residing on Vista Lake Way in North Ridgeville, Ohio, telephoned Animal Control in order to grouse about a family of homeless cats that had taken up residence in a woodpile on her property. In support of her complaint, she argued that the cats had fleas, were creating a stink, and killing wildlife.

Animal Control officer Barry Accorti arrived on the scene twenty minutes later and after informing the complainant that the shelters were full and that the cats would be going to "kitty heaven," he promptly pumped bullets into the tiny heads of a quintuplet of eight to ten-week-old kittens. All of that was just peachy keen to the homeowner until her children, who had witnessed the massacre, started screaming their heads off in horror. Like McCarthy, she had assumed that the killings would have been done out of sight and out of mind.

"It's heartbreaking," Teresa Landon of the Ohio SPCA later told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland on June 11, 2013. (See "North Ridgeville Clears Humane Officer of Wrongdoing for Killing Feral Kittens, but Animal Groups Want Action.")"There is no excuse for it. It's absolutely shameful that someone with the title of humane officer would do this."

Almost in the same breath the hypocritical Landon turned right around and defended the killing of vicious dogs and animals that are in great pain. Not surprisingly, her campaign to get the former thirty-one-year veteran of the North Ridgeville Police Department (NRPD) and a SWAT team commander as well fired for his actions fell upon the deaf ears of Chief of Police Mike Freeman.

"After visiting the scene, talking with the responding officer and re-interviewing the complainant, I have decided his actions were appropriate and have decided not to impose any disciplinary measures for the incident," Freeman pontificated to The Plain Dealer. "The North Ridgeville Police Department recognizes the concern of those who believe feral cats should not be killed for simply trying to survive but also acknowledges other research that recognizes the risks associated with these animals and the need to manage feral cats. Research and other organizations accept shooting as an acceptable means of euthanasia."

By other organizations he undoubtedly has the ABC, the National Audubon Society, and the feds, particularly the USFWS, in mind. His thinking in that regard coincides with Accorti's who, as a bird lover, had gone to great lengths two months earlier in order to save the life of a baby great horned owl that had fallen out of its nest.

To hear Freeman tell it, the eradication of innocent cats is nothing more than a matter of public service and the patented immorality of such aberrant behavior is, consequently, of no concern. "To walk away and leave a safety issue unresolved is irresponsible," he gassed to The Plain Dealer. "At no time does this agency condone or allow the indiscriminate killing of animals, but we will continue to assist residents when there is a safety or nuisance condition."

Since he and Accorti are so obliging, denizens of North Ridgeville have little or nothing to worry about on that score; it is an altogether different matter for cats and other animals residing in the city. Nevertheless, just because Accorti and Freeman have appropriated for themselves an exclusive right to kill animals with impunity that does not in any way legitimize either their thinking or behavior.

So, in the end, Accorti was able to not only get away unscathed with his crimes but to hold onto his job as well. The world, however, had not by a long shot heard the last of either him or his savagery.

On June 9th of this year he was at it again and this time around it was a baby raccoon that he shot dead in front of three children on Root Road. Just as was the case with the unidentified woman who had orchestrated the rubout of "The Woodpile Five," neighbor Tim Sherill did not have the least little problem with Accorti's killing of the raccoon; he simply wished that the execution had been carried out elsewhere.

Tobey

"I own a gun myself," he proudly declared to The Chronicle-Telegram of Elyria on June 10th. (See "Parent Alleges Humane Officer Killed Raccoon in Front of Kids.")"I can understand this up to a point...that they have to put animals down, but you don't do it in front of kids. I'm an adult, and I don't want to see it."

Just as before, old reliable Freeman was johnny-on-the-spot in order to defend North Ridgeville's number one animal killer. "This is a highly-trained individual who can make deductions as to whether this can be done safely or not," he declared to The Chronicle-Telegram. "He is a certified officer. Not somebody we just hire off the street, give them (sic) a gun, and tell them (sic) to go do it."

It is precisely that type of moronic thinking and naked disregard for the rights of animals that has earned Ohio the prestigious title of being the most backward and inhumane state in the union. (See Cat Defender posts of October 20, 2005, February 26, 2007, August 2, 2007, and April 8, 2008 entitled, respectively, "After Ridding the Ohio Statehouse of Rats, Cats Now Find Themselves Facing Eviction,""Charged with Feeding a Feral Cat Named Fluffy, Retired Ohio English Teacher Beats the Rap,""Ohio Cat Shot in the Leg with an Arrow Is Forced to Endure a Long-Drawn-Out and Excruciating Death," and "Ohio Politician Proposes Adding Cats to the Growing List of Pigs, Other Animals, and Humans Killed by Tasers.")

Sometimes the deliberate lies of private citizens are superfluous when it comes to dooming cats in that Animal Control officers and shelters are quite capable of doing the foul deeds from start to finish all by themselves. For instance, in late February of 2012, an unidentified Animal Control officer in Port St. Lucie trapped Shannon Johnson's elderly orange and white cat Pumpkin during a massive one-day roundup and subsequent extermination of more than fifty cats suspected of being homeless. Pumpkin, too, was taken to the St. Lucie County Humane Society and soon thereafter liquidated.

"He was senselessly killed. He shouldn't have been treated this way. He really shouldn't have," his heartbroken owner sobbed to WPEC-TV of West Palm Beach on March 6, 2012. (See "Port St. Lucie Family Pet Caught in Feral Cat Roundup, Euthanized.")"He was a special little guy."

The shelter's David Robertson defended his agency's cold-blooded murder of Pumpkin on the grounds that he was neither licensed, tagged, nor microchipped. He also claims that he failed a temperament test. "This cat unfortunately was very aggressive," he swore to WPEC-TV.

Although a cat's socio-economic status should not have any bearing whatsoever on whether it is allowed to live, absolutely no one can differentiate with any measurable degree of expertise between homeless and domiciled cats. Secondly, so-called temperament tests are a hoax in that almost any cat that is kidnapped by strangers and taken to a shelter where it is confined to a cage is apt to exhibit signs of aggression. The same would hold true for most individuals subjected to the same set of circumstances.

Robertson is furthermore exposed as a barefaced liar by the Animal Control officer who noted on the impound report that Pumpkin was wearing a flea collar and appeared to have an owner. Under those circumstances, it is nothing short of criminal that the officer did not immediately release Pumpkin in the neighborhood where he was trapped instead of initialing his death warrant by stubbornly proceeding on with him to the shelter.

Suspected of being homeless is, however, only one of the many justifications that Animal Control officers and shelters make use of in order to steal and kill cats. Why, even suffering from so much as a minor, preeminently treatable, condition is quite often sufficient in order to get an otherwise healthy cat killed.

For instance, at 9 a.m. on September 1st of last year six-year-old gray-colored and deaf Snuffy ran out the back door of Anna Latimer's house on Ellengale Road in Burlington, Ontario. An hour and forty-seven minutes later she was picked up by an unidentified Animal Control officer and immediately killed because she had a common cold.

"It appeared very sick to us," David Lake of Burlington Animal Control (BAC) told Metro Canada of Toronto on September 6, 2013. (See "Runaway Cat Euthanized Without Owner's Consent over Cold-Like Symptoms.")"Bringing it into our shelter would basically infect our cats."

It did not take long, however, for veterinarian Scott Mathison of Queen West Animal Hospital in Toronto to expose Lake as a liar by pointing out that neither the herpes virus nor an upper respiratory infection were valid reasons for killing a cat. "Definitely not," he told Metro Canada.

In addition to BAC's lies about Snuffy's health, it even refused to acknowledge that it knew anything about the cat when Latimer contacted it on September 3rd. It was not until the following day that it finally came clean and admitted to having stolen and killed her.

Haze

"I never even got the opportunity to try and go there and claim her or do anything to get her back," Latiner told Metro Canada."She survived lots of things and some hardships. I just feel it was a really bad way to go."

Police officers operate pretty much along the same lines as Animal Control officers when it comes to cats with the notable exception that they dispense with all the procedural niceties and instead settle matters with their guns. For example, on March 22, 2008 an unidentified individual in Cecil, Pennsylvania, telephoned the police in order to complain about a group of cats loitering on either his or her property. The complainant also alleged that one of them was rabid.

An unidentified twenty-five-year veteran of the force was dispatched to the scene where he trapped and shot Roger Oldaker's ten-year-old Persian, Elmo. Not only was Elmo falsely accused of having rabies, but his murder was a crime of opportunity made possible by his friendliness and lack of fear of humans.

"He was not injured. He just didn't know where to run," Oldaker later revealed. "Another cat ran away, and the policeman said if my cat would have run, he would have let him go."  Sadly, he was destined to prematurely join Elmo in the great void on May 11, 2013 at the age of forty-nine. (See Cat Defender post of March 31, 2008 entitled "Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo.")

In another simply outrageous case that is eerily similar to what happened to Clark, on Labor Day of 2009 Kelly Wesner's nineteen-year-old cat Tobey went out for a stroll in Raymore, Missouri, and somehow wound up either near or inside an unidentified neighbor's garage. The cat-hater first turned a garden hose on him before telephoning the police in order to report that a "large, vicious feral cat with rabies" had scratched a girl.

Accepting the cat-hater's accusations without reservation, the police snared Tobey with a catch pole and then pumped two shotgun blasts into his head. They then nonchalantly deposited his ensanguinated corpse in a Dumpster.

In the wake of the public outrage that followed, the cops enlarged considerably upon the original lies spread by the cat-hater. Specifically, they maintained that Tobey had his claws extended and that he was so vicious that it took a trio of them in order to get him, scratching and clawing, into the killing box.

As it later came to light, Tobey not only was deaf but declawed as well. Furthermore, he not only was not rabid but since he suffered from Feline Hyperthyroidism his weight had plummeted to only six pounds.

"He was our family member," a badly shaken Wesner later said. "He was the sweetest animal (and he) was always there to be your friend. He didn't know a stranger." (See Cat Defender post of September 16, 2009 entitled "Acting Solely Upon the Lies of a Cat-Hater, Raymore Police Pump Two Shotgun Blasts into the Head of Nineteen-Year-Old Declawed and Deaf Tobey.")

Larry

History repeated itself again on August 20, 2011 when an unidentified officer with the Lebanon Police Department shot Dori Stone's obese cat, Haze, in the head and then deposited his corpse in a trash can. Just as was the case with Clark, Elmo, and Tobey, the killer accepted at face value the unsubstantiated allegations of an unidentified neighbor that Haze was rabid.

"We love our cats. Do you know what it was like to pull your pet out of the garbage can and then pull him out of the garbage bag and his head is bloody with a bullet hole in it?" she later related. "It's so violent that they did this to our animal and made no effort to call the humane society to find his owners."

Furthermore, it is impossible to even begin to calculate the emotional toll that Haze's cold-blooded murder has taken on Stone and her husband, Randall. "My husband and I have not eaten since Sunday morning (August 21st). We are just sick," she said afterwards. "We close our eyes at night and see his little face and to think as good of care we took of him for almost seven years, those were his last moments and that was the way he had to die; it's unbearable." (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2011 entitled "Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Cold-Blooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop.")

On January 13th of this year, a two-year-old male named Larry that was owned by John and Teresa Kauth was trapped and shot to death by Wally Holz, a fifteen-year veteran of the Bloomfield Police Department in Nebraska. He then dumped Larry's body behind a maintenance shed downtown.

In a storyline that has become nauseatingly familiar, Holz was acting at the behest of residents who hate homeless cats. One of them even complained that they were getting into his garbage.

On February 3rd, the Bloomfield City Council voted to give Holz a written reprimand but that is all. Quite understandably, that did not sit well with the Kauths' veterinarian daughter, Lisa Kilgore.

"Larry is finally at peace and I will do everything in my power to make sure this never happens to another animal again," she vowed to the Norfolk Daily News on February 8th. (See "Bloomfield Officer Disciplined for Killing Cat.")

Even requesting police assistance for an injured cat can be a fatal mistake as Wayne Meadows of Settlers Lane in Harrisonburg, Virginia, found out firsthand on November 11, 2011. On that tragic occasion he telephoned the Harrisonburg Police Department (HPD) for help with a forever nameless cat that had been run down and injured by a hit-and-run motorist.

What he and the cat received in return was something altogether different. Specifically, although veterinary assistance was only thirty minutes away, officer Jonathan N. Snoddy elected to finish off the cat right then and now with his night stick which he promptly did with up to as many as twenty savage blows to the head. Although he eventually was forced to face the music in court, in the end he was acquitted of animal cruelty charges and allowed to keep his job. (See Cat Defender posts of March 22, 2012, April 26, 2012, and August 23, 2012 entitled, respectively, "In Another Outrageous Miscarriage of Justice, Rogue Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Is Let Off with a $50 Fine for Savagely Bludgeoning to Death an Injured Cat,""Virginia's Disreputable Legal and Political Establishment Is All Set to Acquit Jonathan N. Snoddy at His Retrial for Brutally Beating to Death an Injured Cat," and "Cat-Killing Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Struts Out of Court as Free as a Bird Thanks to a Carefully Choreographed Charade Concocted by Virginia's Despicable and Dishonest Legal System.")

Bobby and His Injuries

As bad as small cats are treated by the police, the situation is even more deplorable for large ones who enjoy absolutely no protections against the evil designs of officers who slaughter them in droves and with impunity on a regular basis. (See Cat Defender posts of November 3, 2011, May 5, 2008, and January 28, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Sheriff Matt Lutz Settles an Old Score by Staging a Great Safari Hunt That Claims the Lives of Eighteen Tigers and Seventeen Lions in Zanesville,""Chicago's Rambo-Style Cops Corner and Execute a Cougar to the Delight of the Hoi Polloi and Capitalist Media," and "Hopped Up on Vodka and Pot, Trio Taunted Tatiana Prior to Attacks That Led to Her Being Killed by the Police.")

As far as it is known, the only times that cops have even so much as lost their jobs for killing and injuring cats has been for crimes that they have committed while off-duty. For example, North Carolina State Trooper Shawn C. Houston of Granite Falls was fired on January 22, 2010 after he was convicted of trapping and shooting to death a five-month-old orange and white kitten named Rowdy that belonged to his next-door neighbor, Andrea Evans. It allegedly was Rowdy's pussyfooting on his vehicles that precipitated Houston's murderous behavior.

At trial, he escaped punishment by paying only $125 in court costs and at last word he was still trying to get back his old job. (See Cat Defender post of July 8, 2010 entitled "North Carolina State Trooper Who Illegally Trapped and Shot His Next-Door Neighbor's Cat, Rowdy, Is Now Crying for His Job Back.")

On May 21, 2013, Lance DeLeon of the Boerne Police Department shot Natalie Brunner's two-year-old brown cat Bobby with a crossbow and an arrow after he strayed into his garden. The projectile punctured a lung and broke Bobby's right leg but he, mercifully, survived.

The attack underscores the propensity of cops to ignore procedures, both legal and otherwise, and to take the law into their own hands in that DeLeon's assault on Bobby came out of the blue and without any prior warning whatsoever having been voiced to Brunner. "He could have come and easily said, 'Do you own a little brown cat? He comes into my yard and I don't like it'," she related to the Daily Mail on May 24, 2013. (See "Off-Duty Texas Police Officer Arrested after Shooting Neighbor's Cat with Arrow.")"Turn a water hose on him, call Animal Control. Being a policeman, he had every resource at his fingertips."

DeLeon was arrested and charged with animal cruelty but a Kendall County Grand Jury refused to indict him on June 3, 2013 thanks in no small part to the shameful, lackluster prosecution of Kendall County District Attorney Bruce Curry who went after him with all the ferocity of a doting parent. Chief of Police Jim Kohler belatedly did the right thing, however, when he gave DeLeon his walking papers a day later. (See the Houston Press, June 6, 2013, "Lance DeLeon: Cop Fired after Shooting Neighbor's Cat with Arrow" and KSAT-TV of San Antonio, June 5, 2013, "Boerne Police Officer Terminated after Allegedly Shooting Cat with Arrow.")

Cops additionally gun down dogs with impunity as Snoddy's colleague with the HPD, Sergeant Russell Metcalf, did to an eight-month-old collie-mix named Sadie owned by Bryan Ware on April 3, 2012. On that occasion, the only offense that Sadie committed in order to warrant her on-the-spot execution was to approach Metcalf as he rode his bicycle through her neighborhood.

He subsequently was indicted and stood trial twice but in the end his buddies within the judicial branch let him off with a measly $800 fine. (See Cat Defender posts of July 18, 2012 and September 7, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Bloodthirsty and Lawless Harrisonburg Police Follow Up Their Bludgeoning to Death of an Injured Cat by Gunning Down a Collie named Sadie" and "Peripatetic Helvin Rides to the Rescue of Harrisonburg Police Sergeant Russell Metcalf and in Doing So Puts the Judicial Stamp of Approval on His Gunning Down of Sadie.")

During the interim between his two court appearances, Metcalf gave up the struggle to hold onto his job and resigned on October 1, 2012. (See the Daily News Record of Harrisonburg, January 10, 2013, "Ex-City Officer Fined.")

Metcalf's behavior was not as isolated incident in that it is common practice for cop all across the country to gun down dogs that so much as bark at them. Such conduct is not only lawless and morally abhorrent, but it stands in stark juxtaposition to that demonstrated by letter carriers, traveling salesmen, deliverymen, bicyclists, pedestrians, and others who must deal with aggressive dogs all the time and yet none of them pull out guns and shoot them.

Lance DeLeon

Policemen also deliberately kill service dogs by knowingly sending them out to confront armed gunmen that they are too cowardly to arrest themselves. The same is true of their unconscionable use and abuse of them as cadaver dogs at toxic sites, such as Ground Zero in Manhattan.

Numerous police dogs additionally have died from cancerous growths that most likely were caused by secondhand smoke that they were subjected to while being cooped up inside patrol cars all day with officers who smoke like chimneys. Yet, despite the litany of unspeakable abuse that they are subjected to, no animal rights group is willing to either speak up for these dogs or to demand that mankind address the evils that it has created instead of fobbing off that hazardous job on unsuspecting canines.

Given that it is so rare for any of the myriad of despicable crimes perpetrated against defenseless cats, dogs, and other animals by Animal Control officers and policemen to even so much as see the light of day, the full scope of not only their atrocities but the lies and ruses that they employ in carrying them out remains unknown. Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that the former, aided and abetted by shelters and veterinarians, liquidate millions of them each year in the United States. As for cops, the annual tally of just their feline victims alone is surely in the hundreds if not indeed thousands.

As go the animals, so goes man. Consequently, it is not surprising that a New York City police officer recently choked to death Eric Garner of Staten Island for, of all things, selling "loosies." Countless unarmed individuals, such as Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, likewise have been gunned down by the police.

It is not merely those suspected of doing something illegal but innocent bystanders as well, such as twenty-one-year-old Hofstra University student Andrea Rebello and eighty-nine-year-old Marie Zienkewicz of the Philadelphia suburb of Warminster, that trigger-happy cops armed with dangerous automatic weapons are killing with impunity. (See the Huffington Post, May 19, 2013, "Andrea Rebello Killed: Hofstra Student Shot by Police During 'Crime of Opportunity'" and the Courier Times of Levittown, March 8, 2013, "DA: Warminster Officer Accidentally Shot Eighty-Nine-Year-Old During Standoff.")

No surprisingly homeless men, already half-dead, vulnerable, and shamelessly forgotten by society, continue to be favorite targets of the police. For instance, in July of 2011 Fullerton police officers Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli beat to death thirty-seven-year-old Kelly Thomas at a bus station.

Even though a word-by-word and blow-by-blow account of the attack was captured on a thirty-three-minute surveillance camera as well as audio recorders worn by the officers themselves, a jury comprised of suck-ups to authority in Santa Ana deliberated for less than eight hours on January 13th of this year before acquitting both officers. The Justice Department in Washington is supposedly looking into the matter but no one should expect anything positive to come of that crass public relations ploy in that it is designed only to quiet protesters and to pull the wool over the eyes of a gullible public.

"All of us need to be very afraid now, Thomas' father Ron, a former deputy sheriff himself no less, told The Guardian on January 14th. (See "Verdict Clearing Ex-California Cops of Killing Homeless Man Sparks Protests.")"Police officers everywhere can beat us, kill us, whatever they want, but it has been proven right here today they'll get away with it."

That always has been the case as far as cats are concerned and in that regard it is a foregone conclusion that the officer who shot and nearly killed Clark never will be held accountable under the law. Clark survived by the skin of his teeth but that does not in any material way alter the terrifying reality that in doing so he became only one cat in a million to have been so fortunate.

What most individuals fail to realize is that there is an indelible link between a disregard for the sanctity of animal life on the one hand and a disrespect for human rights on the other hand. That line of reasoning can even be extended to include the environment.

Broadly speaking, respect for the sanctity of life is indivisible; either every cat, human, and tree counts or, sooner or later, nothing and no one is going to count.

Photos: Amelia Kunhardt of the Portland Press Herald (Clark, x-ray, and Clark with Roth), Seth Koenig of the Bangor Daily News (Clark in his cage), Constance Große (Cindy), WTSP-TV (Peggy), Daily Mail and WKYC-TV of Cleveland (Accorti), WPEC-TV of West Palm Beach (Pumpkin), Shannon Johnson (Snuffy and Pebbles), Roger Oldaker (Elmo), Kelly Wesner (Tobey), Dori Stone (Haze), Life with Cats (Larry), South Texas Veterinary Specialists of San Antonio (Bobby), and WOAI-TV of San Antonio and the Daily Mail (DeLeon).

Hamish McHamish

"I picked him out of the litter because he was the boldest. Arguably that was a mistake."
-- Marianne Baird

The only thing worse than reporting upon the death of a cat is being forced to bury one. It nevertheless is a sorrowful task that must be performed.

It therefore was with profound sadness coupled with a burning outrage that it recently was learned that former BBC producer Marianne Baird had enlisted the services of an unidentified veterinarian in St. Andrews in order to kill off the world famous Hamish McHamish. (See Cat Defender post of June 20, 2014 entitled "St. Andrews Honors Hamish McHamish with a Bronze Statue but Does Not Have the Decency, Love, and Compassion in Order to Provide Him with a Warm, Secure, and Permanent Home.")

That dirty and patently immoral deed was carried out early on September 11th allegedly because the handsome longhaired orange and white tom with watery green eyes had contracted a common cold. "In the end, the chest infection that he had been battling proved too much for him and the kindest thing to do was to let him go," either Baird or one of her flunkies announced on that date in an untitled article that appeared on Hamish's popular Facebook page.

As best it could be determined, he had been ill for only a few days in that an August 25th note on his Facebook page fails to make any mention of him being sick. In fact, the first inkling that there was anything amiss with him at all surfaced on September 9th in another untitled article on his Facebook page. Even that posting is remarkable only for what it failed to disclose. For example:

"Most of you will have noticed that I've been a little quieter lately. That's because I have been rather poorly. At fifteen years young, things that were once easy to overcome are now more difficult. My mum and the vet are keeping a close eye on me and I am being very well looked after. For now though, I'm taking some time to try to get better."

As it always is the case in matters such as this, no specifics as to Hamish's health have been revealed. All that the public has to go on is Baird's assertion that he was better off dead.

Without knowing all the specifics it is difficult to speak with any degree of authority but it is nonetheless strongly suspected that Hamish was killed off simply because Baird was too cheap and lazy in order to care for him during his time of greatest need. As far as her accomplice is concerned, it is well established that murdering cats, dogs, and other animals constitutes a substantial portion of all veterinarians' income.

For instance, it is common practice for these charlatans to charge distraught owners an arm and a leg in order to treat ailing cats. When they demur, the bloodsuckers counter by offering to whack their companions at a far more reasonable fee. If truth in advertising any longer counted for much of anything, the members of this disgraceful profession would be compelled by law to promote themselves butchers as opposed to animal doctors.

The premature, cold-blooded killing off of Hamish involves considerably more than moral and ethical objections however in that it is beyond debate that common colds in cats, as in humans, are preeminently treatable maladies. While it is true that a cat's immune system is pretty much on its own when it comes to fighting off the primary viral infection, the amino acid Lysine has been shown to be helpful in that regard. Antibiotics, such as amoxicillin, can be applied in order to treat secondary bacterial infections.

In addition to all of that, cats need to be kept hydrated and well nourished. In the event that for whatever reason they fail to eat and drink, they must be forcibly fed and given subcutaneous fluids.

"The prognosis for recovery from viral upper respiratory infections is excellent, with the majority of adult cats making a full recovery," Manhattan veterinarian Arnold Plotnick wrote August 17, 2006 in an article entitled "Viral Upper Respiratory Infections in Cats" that can be found online at www.manhattancats.com.

Furthermore, it is not merely unconscionable owners like Baird and moneygrubbing veterinarians that are in the habit of killing off cats with common colds but Animal Control officers and shelters as well. For example, on September 1st of last year Burlington Animal Control stole and subsequently murdered Anna Latimer's six-year-old gray and deaf cat, Snuffy, all because she, like Hamish, had come down with a common cold.

Like Plotnick, Scott Mathison of Queen West Animal Hospital in Toronto is of the opinion that cats suffering from common colds and the herpes virus should not be killed. "Definitely not," he told Metro Canada on September 6, 2013. (See "Runaway Cat Euthanized Without Owner's Consent over Cold-Like Symptoms.")

Although it is utterly reprehensible, the sad truth of the matter is that there are not many owners and even fewer shelters that are willing to devote the time and money required in order to nurse cats stricken with common colds back to health. Rather, they look upon them in much the same fashion as they do pairs of worn-out shoes.

The common thread that unites both individuals and shelters alike is the pressing desire to get rid of aged, sickly, and injured cats as quickly and as cheaply as possible. The mere existence of such a perverted sense of values speaks volumes for the human race but it is anything but a flattering story.

Hamish on the Go, July 18th

Hamish's immune system ultimately may not have been resilient enough in order to have successfully warded off the infection, especially considering his advanced years, but he unreservedly deserved to have been given every opportunity, no matter how marginal, to have gone on living. By depriving him of that opportunity both Baird and the attending practitioner are guilty of cold-blooded, premeditated murder.

Baird's behavior is especially appalling in that she cruelly abandoned Hamish to wander the forbidding streets of St. Andrews like a threadbare vagabond as soon as he had celebrated his first birthday. Then, lo and behold, she reentered his life fourteen years later only to have him killed off.

Even if worse had come to worst, Hamish was quite capable of dying on his own and at his own sweet time and he certainly neither needed nor wanted any input from his derelict owner. The dying part of existence is every bit as easy as falling off of a log backwards; it is the living part that rips out the guts of both cats and men.

Baird's simply abhorrent mistreatment of Hamish bears a striking resemblance to that meted out to another fifteen-year-old cat named Dodger from West Street in Bridport, Dorset, by his derelict owner, Fee Jeanes. Too busy pursuing a career as a hoofer in order to properly care for him, she likewise turned loose the ginger-colored tom to ride the buses in Dorset and Devonshire by his lonesome and only reentered his life at the last minute in February of 2012 after he had been diagnosed with a stomach tumor.

Like Baird, she quickly dispensed with her custodial and moral obligations to Dodger by having him whacked by the practitioners at Bredy Veterinary Centre. Quite obviously, both mesdames consider abject neglect and jabs of sodium pentobarbital to constitute the alpha and the omega of proper cat care. (See Cat Defender post of August 27, 2014 entitled "After Traveling for So Many Miles on the Bridport to Charmouth Bus, Dodger's Last Ride Is, Ironically, to the Vet Who Unconscionably Snuffs Out His Precious Life at the Urging of His Derelict Owner.")

In London, the Fleet Street crowd is often disparagingly referred to as reptiles and that comparison is grossly unfair, not to the former, but rather to the latter. By virtue of the privileged perches that they occupy as members of the Fourth Estate, Baird and her colleagues go through life believing that they are entitled to only the very best that this world has to offer.

Such an attitude is accompanied by the equally strong conviction that they owe absolutely nothing to anyone in return. Not surprisingly, journalists have a long and checkered history of abusing and killing cats. (See Cat Defender posts of July 17, 2013, September 28, 2011, and February 9, 2006 entitled, respectively, "Not Satisfied with Merely Whacking Meiko, Garrison Keillor Struts on Stage in Order to Shed a Bucketful of Crocodile Tears and to Denigrate the Entire Species,""Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor," and "Newspaper Cat Named Tripod Is Killed Off by Journalists He Befriended in Vermont.")

All of those heinous crimes are in addition to the simply outrageous libels and slanders that the capitalist media are constantly directing at the species at the urging of ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and the United States government. (See Cat Defender posts of March 23, 2007, December 8, 2007, July 10, 2008, and June 15, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Bird Lovers in South Africa Break Out the Champagne to Celebrate the Merciless Gunning Down of the Last of Robben Island's Cats,""All the Lies That Fit: Scheming New York Times Hires a Bird Lover to Render His 'Unbiased' Support for James M. Stevenson,""The Ventura County Star Races to the Defense of the Cat-Killers on San Nicolas Island,""and "American Bird Conservancy, The New York Times, and the Humane Society Unite to Form an Achse des Bösen Against Cats.")

Every cat-hating rant ever issued by PETA has been duly reported as the gospel truth by seemingly every newspaper in America and last year the Orlando Sentinel stooped so low as to publish the National Audubon Society's call for all cats to be poisoned. (See Cat Defender post of May 18, 2013 entitled "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It.")

In spite of that it nevertheless would be incorrect to single out journalists as being the only professionals who harbor in their malignant bosoms an abiding contempt for the sanctity of feline life. Au contraire, librarians, politicians, phony-baloney no-kill operations, and even cat advocacy groups feel the same way. (See Cat Defender posts of December 7, 2006, March 12, 2009, October 23, 2012, and January 2, 2013 entitled, respectively, "After Nineteen Years of Service and Companionship, Ingrates at Iowa Library Murder Dewey Readmore Books,""Too Lazy and Cheap to Care for Him During His Final Days, Bettie Currie Has Socks Killed Off and His Corpse Burned,""A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care," and "Alley Cat Allies Demonstrates Its Utter Contempt for the Sanctity of Life by Unconscionably Killing Off Its Office Cat, Jared.")

When push finally came to shove, not even being a heroine with international stature was sufficient in order to have saved the beloved Scarlett from the hangman. (See Cat Defender post of October 27, 2008 entitled "Loved and Admired All Over the World, Feline Heroine Scarlett Is Killed Off by Her Owners after She Becomes Ill.")

No details have been disclosed as to what was done with Hamish's remains. Likewise, it is not even known if Baird had the decency to provide him with a proper funeral.

His Facebook page, which at last glance had attracted eight-thousand, nine-hundred-sixty-six followers, has not been updated since the tragic announcement of September 11th. All that is known for certain is that shortly after his death bouquets of flowers and lighted candles were dropped off at the bronze statue of him that was unveiled in Church Square on April 5th.

Hopefully it is not the case, but more than likely he was either cremated or simply chucked out in the trash in that it is hard to imagine someone like Baird doing right by him in death since she had so miserably failed him in life. Even more telling, she does not appear to have been all that broken up about putting an end to his all-too-brief sojourn upon this earth.

"I think the whole story's absurd," she cackled to the University of St. Andrews' student newspaper, The Saint, on September 18th. (See "Hamish McHamish: "He Started Out...")"He started out as just this little cat and became a positive legend. He was just a cat who would walk by himself."

His Statue Is a Poor Substitute for the Real Thing

Her last sentence is, rather obviously, a reference to Rudyard Kipling's scurrilous short-story, "The Cat Who Walked by Himself." In it Kipling feebly attempts to justify the naked abuse of cats by what he estimates to be sixty per cent of men and one-hundred per cent of dogs on the grounds that cats are too independent and therefore totally unwilling to become slaves.

Kipling's forever nameless cat successfully ingratiates himself to a cavewoman by catching mice and looking after her newborn. In return, she allows him to enter her cave, to warm by the fire, and to drink milk three times a day.

Even in agreeing to become domesticated, the cat still insisted upon maintaining his independence and although that was agreeable with her, it was a totally different matter as far as her husband was concerned. "I will catch mice when I am in the cave for always and always and always; but I am still the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me," he pledged to the caveman.

"Not when I am near," the brute shot back. "If you had not said that last I would have put all these things (two leather boots, a stone ax, a piece of wood, and a hatchet) away for always and always and always; but I am now going to throw my two boots and my little stone ax (that makes three) at you whenever I meet you. And so shall all proper men do after me."

The cat likewise attempted in vain to maintain his independence from the caveman's dog. "I will be kind to the baby while I am in the cave, as long as he does not pull my tail too hard, for always and always and always," he agreed to the canine's demand. "But still I am the cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to me!"

"Not when I am near," the dog barked back. "If you had not said that last word I would have shut my mouth for always and always and always; but now I am going to hunt you up a tree whenever I meet you. And so shall all proper dogs do after me."

Philadelphia scribe Agnes Repplier summed up the dilemma considerably less allegorical in her essay entitled "Agrippina" which appeared in the June 1892 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. "Rude and masterful souls resent this fine self-sufficiency in a domestic animal, and require that it shall have no will but theirs, no pleasure that does not emanate from them," she astutely observed. "Yet there are people, less magisterial, perhaps or less exacting, who believe that true friendship, even with an animal, may be built upon mutual esteem and independence; that to demand gratitude is to be unworthy of it; and that obedience is not essential to agreeable and healthy intercourse."

Both Kipling's and Repplier's insights into how both men and dogs feel about cats have stunning philosophical and political ramifications. Specifically, it thus would appear that what most men truly abhor above all else is independence and freedom and it does not necessarily matter whether such behavior is exhibited by either a cat or one of their fellows.

Kiplings's portrayal of both men and dogs also exposes them to be totalitarians who are not only prone to violence but unwilling to honor their agreements. Women, on the other hand, come across as being considerably more open-minded, reasonable, just and, above all, less prone to violence.

According to Hamish's obituary in London's Independent on September 11th, Baird acquired "replacement pets" soon after she irresponsibly abandoned Hamish to the streets. (See "Hamish McHamish Dead: St. Andrew's (sic) Town Cat Passes Away after Battling Chest Infection.")

Although it is not known either what those pets were or how she has treated them, it is strongly suspected that some of them were dogs and that certainly would be in keeping with both her personality as well as her apparent fondness for Kipling's overt denigration of cats. His summation is quite illuminating. For example:

"Pussy can sit by the fire and sing, pussy can climb a tree, or play with a silly old cork and string to 'muse herself, not me. But I like Binkie my dog, because he knows how to behave; so Binkie's the same as the first friend was, and I am the man in the cave. Pussy will play man-Friday till it's time to wet her paw and make her walk on the windowsill (for the footprint Crusoe saw); then she fluffs her tail and meows, and scratches and won't attend. But Binkie will play whatever I choose and he is my true first friend. Pussy will rub my knees with her head pretending she loves me hard; but the minute I go to my bed pussy runs out in the yard, and there she stays till the morning light; so I know it is only pretend; but Binkie, he snores at my feet all night, and he is my firstest friend!"

In rattling off such age-old prejudices as those, Kipling inadvertently revealed himself to be a complete imbecile when it comes to cats. Actually, they can be every bit as devoted and loving as dogs.

Secondly, they were domesticated by farmers in Cyprus, the Near East, and China and certainly not by cavemen. (See Washington University of St. Louis press release of December 16, 2013, "Cat Domestication Traced to Chinese Farmers Five-Thousand-Three-Hundred Years Ago."

Thirdly, few cats, if any, are truly able to walk by themselves, especially in a world that is so chock-full of despisers of the species. The only thing that Old Kippie got right was when he correctly identified himself as a caveman and for Baird to rely upon his sottise in order to excuse her neglet of Hamish can only be termed as shameful and disgraceful.

Cats consequently require the assistance of sympathetic individuals if they are going to survive and flourish in this hostile world. With that being the case, the key issue then boils down to the specifics of the Faustian bargains that are foisted upon them and in Hamish's case he clearly got the shaft whereas Baird and St. Andrews got the gold mine.

Hamish Is Chased Up a Tree by a Pair of Dogs

Flora Selwyn, editor of St. Andrews in Focus and who also spearheaded the drive to raise the £5,000 needed for the statue of Hamish, recalls how his presence lifted the spirits of the bedraggled construction crew at the St. Andrews Brewing Company. "The workmen weren't sure they would get everything done on time. They looked down, saw his tail waving and everyone knew everything would be fine," is how she chose to remember him to The Saint. "That's the reputation he acquired. He was rather magical in that sense."

Although there is not any obvious reason to doubt her sincerity, it nevertheless is strange that the September-October edition of her magazine neglects to make any mention whatsoever of Hamish's demise. The rag's web site likewise is pretending that he is still alive by continuing to showcase a video about the unveiling of his statue.

"It has to do with fantasy," is how she went onto explain his popularity to The Saint. "It's just a lovely fairy tale."

Whereas that may have been true as far as Selwyn and her fellow denizens of St. Andrews were concerned, it was an entirely different matter for Hamish who had a hard life and an even crueler, premature death. Astrid Lindgren may have romanticized life on the road in her 1956 thoroughly enchanting little volume, Rasmus and the Vagabond, but there cannot be any denying that being homeless is one of the most disastrous fates that ever could befall a cat.

That makes it especially difficult to comprehend how Baird could have so cruelly condemned him to a lifetime on the street. "Sometimes he'd come home for dinner," she disclosed to The Saint. "But it wasn't long before he'd be back in Queens Gardens or further afield. The garden just wasn't big enough for him."

Declaration such as that do not stand the test of reason in that although cats like to roam, most of them also enjoy the availability of free food and shelter, especially during inclement weather. One possible conclusion to be drawn from Hamish's atypical behavior is that he was made to feel, for whatever reason, unwelcome at home.

Even more alarming, Baird apparently did not make all that much of an effort to keep him at home. "When he started to wander around, he used to go to Greyfriars Garden at night because it was a good hunting ground. I would call him and carry him home," she told The Courier of Dundee on April 7th. (See "St. Andrews Pays Tribute to Famous Feline Hamish McHamish.")"If he didn't want to come home, he would jump over the wall. But more and more, he would just jump over the wall."

In all fairness to her, keeping a cat at home is a far more difficult task than most people realize. That is especially the case after one has gotten a taste of freedom.

In the final analysis, there is not any easy answer to this dilemma. Cats deserve their freedom but it is extremely dangerous for them to be outside without a chaperon. One possible compromise would be to provide them with large fenced-in yards that are covered on the top with nets.

Although doing so is feasible for only a handful of owners, that is exactly what veterinarian Hugh Chisholm did for his cat, Tuxedo Stan. In the end, however, he negated that good deed by killing him off after he became ill. (See Cat Defender post of September 26, 2013 entitled "Former Halifax Mayoral Hopeful Tuxedo Stan Is Killed Off by His Owner after Chemotherapy Fails to Halt the Onslaught of Renal Lymphoma.")

Nothing is ever easy with cats and keeping them cooped up inside polluted houses and apartments all the time is not only cruel but ruinous to their health. In addition to that, the majority of them nowadays are sterilized, fitted with cancer-causing microchips, and fed diets of cheap kibble instead of the meat that they crave.

Some owners even cruelly declaw them while others, ably assisted by unscrupulous veterinarians, dope them up in order to keep them from going stir crazy as the result of their boredom, isolation, and confinement. Even during their twilight years their owners cruelly deprive them of even dying natural deaths.

Just when it would appear that modern man had all but exhausted his bag of dirty tricks when it comes to denaturing cats, Sarah Ellis of Lincoln University in Lincolnshire gets the wind up and proposes that cat ownership be strictly curtailed. "I think what would be helpful for people would be to restrict the number of cats that they own," she declared to The Independent on September 29th. (See "Expert Urges Cat Lovers to Own Just One Animal Each.")

Ellis' assertion that multiple cat households lead to territorial disputes and psychological harm brought a swift rebuke from Celia Hammond whose charity, the Celia Hammond Animal Trust (CHAT), did such a herculean job in saving approximately two-hundred cats from the wrecking ball when large swaths of East London where demolished in order to make way for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. "The majority of cats are very gregarious. They love each other so much, they enjoy living together and grooming each other," she retorted to The Independent."If someone was out all day, we wouldn't give them just one cat because they would be lonely; we would give them two cats. Multiple cat households are a good thing."

Hammond summed up by putting the boneheaded Ellis in her place. "This is an academic view," she told The Independent. "Those involved in rehoming cats on a daily basis know this is ridiculous." (Also see CHAT's October 2nd rebuttal to Ellis on its Facebook page.)

Hamish Lies in Bed on August 25th

In spite of the myriad of difficulties involved in caring for a cat, there is absolutely nothing in press reports that would tend to indicate that Baird even so much as endeavored to get Hamish off the street during either the wintertime of whenever St. Andrews was buffeted by violent storms. All that has been disclosed is that she did have enough concern for his well-being so as to provide him with an annual veterinary checkup.

That may be too harsh of an assessment of her guardianship but at the same time it is difficult to get around the inescapable conclusion that she could have done considerably more in order to have made his life easier. Either way, it is she who is going to have to live with her behavior and that is destined to create a dilemma if she, against all odds, should turn out to have a conscience.

"I picked him out of the litter because he was the boldest," she admitted to The Saint. "Arguably that was a mistake."

Truer words never have been spoken in that Hamish certainly deserved a far more attentive guardian than she ever was to him. Her glaring shortcomings certainly did not deter her, however, from basking in the limelight once he became an international star.

"I can't really get over it," she gushed to The Courier in the article cited supra. "All I did was get a kitten."

Apparently Hamish was able to spend some nights in the flats of compassionate students from the university. The remainder of the time he apparently was on his own.

"It became an unwritten rule," Selwyn swore to The Saint. "If Hamish turned up at your door, you let him in."

That statement is misleading in that most of the shops and businesses in St. Andrews close their doors in the late afternoon and are shuttered completely on weekends and holidays. Some watering holes and restaurants keep later hours but it is doubtful that many of them are open all night. Consequently, Hamish's options for locating a warm and secure place to sleep were extremely limited.

As a perennially homeless feline, Hamish was forced to deal with the bone-chilling cold, snow, rain, and ice during St. Andrews' seemingly interminable winters where for long periods there are fewer than six hours of daylight. This is how Richard Adams summed up the plight of the dispossessed in his 1972 novel about rabbits entitled Watership Down:

"Many human beings say they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter."

In that respect, it simply boggles the mind that all during the fourteen years that he spent on the street absolutely none of St. Andrews' more than seventeen-thousand residents was willing to provide him with a permanent home. The same criticism can be leveled against the tens of thousands of students and hundreds of teachers and administrators at the University of St. Andrews.

As Ellis and her fellow eggheads have more than amply demonstrated, such crass, selfish, and uncaring behavior is exactly what this world has come to expect from the intelligentsia. (See Cat Defender posts of November 21, 2012 and June 9, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Officials at Plymouth College of Art Should Be Charged with Gross Negligence and Animal Cruelty in the Tragic Death of the School's Longtime Resident Feline, PCAT" and "Pennsylvania College Greedily Snatches Up Alumnus' Multimillion-Dollar Bequest but Turns Away His Cat, Princess.")

As best it could be deciphered from press reports, even obtaining a sufficient amount of sustenance was a hardscrabble affair for Hamish. All that is known with any degree of certainty is that he sometimes was served Frühstück by the law firm of Pagan Osborne at 106 South Street. Students from the university also occasionally fed him and that is vouched for by the disturbing fact that his body weight was known to drop precipitately during the summertime when they were away on vacation.

It also is believed that the staff at Dynamic Hair at 98-100 South Street sometimes cared for his fur but it is not known if they bothered with either removing parasites from it, cleaning away the bothersome discharges that congeal around a cat's eyes, and attending to minor injuries. He additionally received some unspecified favors from the staff at Sue Ryder's Charity Shop at 109-A South Street.

Although the care provided to Hamish by the citizens of St. Andrews was woefully inadequate, they at least did have enough compassion so as to not have him rounded up and killed and for that they are to be commended. Also, he surely would not have survived for as long as he did if they had not been at the very least cat-neutral.

All Alone and on the Street as Usual on June 20th

Besides all the deprivations associated with roughing it, Hamish had to be constantly on the lookout for predators, such as motorists, ailurophobes, and others. Just this past January, for instance, he had an especially close call when he was, just as Kipling presaged, chased up a tree on South Street by a pair of dogs.

Luckily, he was unharmed on that terrifying occasion even though it took the able-bodied assistance of the staff at Dynamic Hair and students from the university in order to bring him down to safety. The unprovoked attack did, however, prompt the provost of Fife and Dunfermline, Jim Leishman, to issue a public appeal on his behalf.

"We've got to protect the old boy. He's getting on. I would ask dog owners to please keep their animals under control and on a leash when around Hamish McHamish," St. Andrews' number one political honcho, Jim Leishman, told the Daily Record of Glasgow on January 30th. (See "Provost of Fife and Dunfermline Legend Jim Leishman Wants to Protect Scotland's Most Famous Cat Hamish McHamish.")"We've got to make sure he's not upset. He's Scotland's most iconic cat, after all."

Despite uttering those lofty sentiments, there is absolutely nothing in the public record to suggest that he ever undertake any concrete measures in order to ensure Hamish's safety. Even more alarming, it does not appear that he attempted in any way to dissuade Baird from having him killed.

A good case could be made that since Baird had abdicated her guardianship of him that Hamish by default belonged to the town and that it was precisely Leishman's moral and legal responsibility to not only safeguard his life but to ensure that he received the competent veterinary care that he needed and so richly deserved. Regrettably, it is doubtful that he would have acted much differently than Baird even if Hamish had been his responsibility. As far as it is known, he has not even publicly commented one way or the other on Hamish's killing.

It is much too late to do anything for Hamish now; Baird has seen to that for once and all time. Moreover, it is doubtful that many residents of St. Andrews are boohooing in their Johnny Walker as the result of his death. Like Colonel Tom Parker with Elvis, they likely believe that Hamish will be worth considerably more to them dead than alive.

For example, his statue is still standing and old Selwyn is already salivating all over herself as visions of wheelbarrows full of shekels dance in her old gray mop just as visions of sugar plums are said to do in the heads of small children at Christmastime. "I hope it will be a big attraction. It'll be a nice change from golf and universities," she declared in an undated video posted on her magazine's web site. (See "Hamish McHamish Unveiling. The Cool Cat Around Town.")"It'll be an added bit to the town."

First of all, inanimate bronze is a poor substitute for the genuine, real-life article. Secondly, the statue is not only hideously ugly but it bears only a faint resemblance to Hamish.

At the very least, any public depiction of him should have been life-sized and fashioned out of porcelain, ceramics, or some other material that would have been capable of accurately capturing the beautiful colors of his fur and eyes. The likeness also should have been accompanied by color photographs, videos, and other memorabilia and housed in either a museum or some other public facility.

Susan McMullan's 2012 biography of him, Hamish McHamish of St. Andrews. Cool Cat About Town, continues to sell well and Waterstones is unlikely to scrap its "Hamish Recommends" section. Most important of all, he will continue to live on in the memories of those who were fortunate enough to have known him.

Since the Scots chose fat slavery at the expense of lean liberty on September 18th, the British Open will be returning to the Old Course next July and it is conceivable that some of the tourists who will be in the auld grey toon for the event belatedly will realize that its most beautiful face and noblest soul is conspicuously missing from the all-too-familiar landscape. Sadly, their recollections and understanding of him are destined to be every bit as selective as those of the town's regulars. After all, mankind in general is infamous for confounding a clear conscience with a faulty memory.

Those who know and truly love cats, however, will not be bamboozled quite so easily. Rather, they will remember all the long, cold, and dark nights that he was forced to spend wet and shivering on the street with hunger pains gnawing at his stomach as he patiently waited for a new day to dawn that, just perhaps, would bring with it a few precious moments of shelter, some food, and a loving pat on the head from a sympathetic stranger.

They also will not forget all the times that he, lonely and frightened, was forced to cower in deserted alleyways and underneath buildings in order to elude predators, both animal and human, that were intent upon doing him harm. Most of all, their souls with burn with rage every time that they think of how his precious life was so cruelly and unjustly extinguished when all he wanted to do was to go on living.

"Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be," Miguel de Cervantes cautioned several centuries ago. That is, quite obviously, an insight that none of the thousands of individuals who either walked in or out of Hamish's brief life over the years ever bothered to take to heart.

Photos: Facebook.

Freya

"...she also likes to spend time in the bar. On many an evening she can be found in Westminster's favored political watering hole, the Red Lion, despite having to cross four lanes of traffic to get there. Apparently at the end of the evening the barmaids regularly have to carry her back home."
-- Oliver Wright of The Independent

Freya, the resident feline of Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had an especially close call on the evening of August 7th when she was struck by a motorist outside of her residence at the world famous 10 Downing Street. The details are pretty sketchy but she apparently was attempting to cross perilous Whitehall Road when she was mowed down.

According to the August 8th edition of the Daily Mail, she was left "battered and bruised."(See "George Osborne's Cat Freya Being Treated by Vets after Being Run Over Outside Downing Street.")

The August 8th report in The Independent was even bleaker. "Not very well at all," is how it summed up her condition. (See "George Osborne's Cat Freya Recovering at the Vets after Being Hit by Car.")

Fortunately, kindhearted pedestrians came to her rescue and saw to it that she was rushed to a veterinarian. As best it could be determined, the nature and extent of her injuries never have been made public.

Consequently, it is not known either how much trauma she was put through or how long it took her to recuperate. All that can be said is that she certainly looks well enough in a photograph of her that was posted September 16th on the Facebook page of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That of course could be an old snap.

The Chancellor afterwards expressed his gratitude to those who came to Freya's assistance but insisted that he would pay for her treatment out of his own pocket. No information has been released as to the identity of her assailant but it would seem likely that she was the victim of a hit-and-run motorist in that it was passersby that came to her aid.

The good news is that Freya somehow survived and is still gracing the face of the earth. The bad news is that Osborne, his authoress wife, Frances, and their two children, Luke and Liberty, have not publicly announced any preventative measures designed to better protect her fragile life.

Relying upon the general public in order to look after a cat is an extremely dicey proposition as both a nameless two-year-old tuxedo and twenty-seven-year-old dog lover Dylan Cottriall of St. Helens in Merseyside found out firsthand back in July. Emaciated, dehydrated, and near death as the result of an infestation of fleas that were sucking the very life out of her, the cat had keeled over in the gutter alongside a busy highway.

Freya in a September 16th Photo Released by the Foreign Office

Unlike the Londoners who came to Freya's rescue, none of the passing motorists could be bothered with stopping to check on her condition. Even Cottriall at first thought that she likely had been run down and killed by a hit-and-run motorist but, thankfully, he had enough compassion and concern for her in order to pull over and make certain one way or the other.

"I stopped and went over to her to see if she had a collar and it was then I could see she was moving," he related to The Reporter of St. Helens on July 11th. (See "Outrage as Drivers Ignore a Dying Cat.")"She was just a bag of bones and had simply given up. Although she was at death's door she didn't stop purring even though she was too weak to do anything to help herself."

Cottriall then rushed the cat to Paws n Claws where she was provided with the emergency veterinary care that she so desperately needed in order to recuperate and thus to go on living. At last report she was in foster care with Gill Farrar of St. Helens.

Although little or nothing is known about the events that led to her abandonment alongside that busy thoroughfare, it is an entirely different story as far as Freya is concerned. Born in April of 2009, Osborne reportedly purchased her as a present for his children while he and his family were residing in Notting Hill, a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in central London.

She did not stick around for long, however, and instead mysteriously disappeared a few months later. The Osbornes reportedly blanked the tony neighborhood with "Lost Cat" posters but Freya never was located.

They eventually wrote her off as being dead and forgot all about her. The Conservatives later prevailed in the 2010 election and a year later the Osbornes moved into 10 Downing Street when George became chancellor of the Exchequer.

As was the case not only with Mark Twain but Prime Minister John Major's cat, Humphrey as well, the news of Freya's death turned out to be premature. In June of 2012, Frances received the shock of her life when she got a telephone call informing her that Freya not only had been found but, best of all, was alive and well.

The identification was made thanks to implanted microchip after Freya had been brought to a veterinarian for unspecified reasons by an unidentified neighbor of the Osbornes in Notting Hill. As best the story can be pieced together, the neighbor had not seen the posters and, believing her to be a stray, had been feeding her in a garden.

St. Helens' Cat, Cottriall, Gill Farrar, and a Woman Identified Only as Lizzie

Since the neighbor resides only a few streets removed from the Osbornes' dwelling, the only logical conclusion to be drawn from events is that they neither searched very hard nor very long for her. In particular, it is totally inexcusable that they did not personally knock on every door in the neighborhood.

That criticism in no way obviates the myriad of difficulties associated with locating an errant cat. Motorists, dogs and other animals, as well as ailurophobes kill them with impunity and afterwards their corpses are quickly disposed of by either garbagemen or the summertime heat.

Animal Control officers, the RSPCA, and other so-called humane groups steal and exterminate them all the time. Plus, they often become accidentally trapped inside automobiles, boxes, discarded furniture, and other movable objects and as a result wind up hundreds, even thousands, of miles from home.

Many private individuals also rescue homeless cats and then lock them up permanently inside, thus foreclosing any opportunity for them to ever return home. In spite of all those impediments, if a lost cat is still living outdoors on its home turf someone likely has seen it and probably is feeding it.

Although the neighbor in question is to be commended for feeding and providing Freya with veterinary assistance, it is shameful that the individual did not provide her with shelter. Not only are London winters far from being pleasant affairs, but she would have been much safer spending at least part of her time indoors.

After having been successfully reunited with the Osbornes, Freya took up residence with them at 10 Downing Street which, contrary to popular belief, serves as the official residence of the chancellor of the Exchequer. The prime minister and his family reside at the more commodious number 11.

It did not take the intrepid moggy long, however, to put her own indelible paw prints on her job as the number two mouser in Her Majesty's government. That began when the Osbornes, not wanting to lose track of her again, outfitted her with a £50 diamante collar with a tag.

Even that act of bon sens was not without controversy coinciding as it did with the austerity budget that Osborne had foisted upon his fellow citizens. (See the Daily Mail, July 20, 2012, "Feline Flush: Chancellor's Cat Shows Off Her Diamante Collar as She Prowls Downing Street.")

Freya and Her Pricey Collar

Later in October of that year, she became involved in a well-publicized scrap with Prime Minister David Cameron's cat, Larry, on the steps of number 10. One observer even later claimed that she had gotten the better of him. (See The Telegraph, October 16, 2012, "Police Called to Break Up Violent Cat Fight in Downing Street.")

It even has been alleged that she is a far more proficient mouser than Larry. That in turn spawned an erroneous rumor that she even had taken his job. (See the Daily Mail, September 16, 2012, "A Paw Performance! Larry the Downing Street Cat Is Sacked as Number 10's Chief Mouser after Chillaxing (sic) Too Much on the Job.")

One of the numerous limitations associated with implanted microchips is that they neither can be seen nor deciphered with the naked eye; for that, scanners owned almost exclusively by veterinarians and shelters are required. It therefore was fortunate that the Osbornes had equipped Freya with a collar and a tag because in May of this year she did yet still another runner.

On that occasion, she wound up in Vauxhall, more than two kilometers removed from home, and in the borough of Lambeth. Fortunately, she was found by Kate Jones of Thames Reach's London Street Rescue who allowed her to spend the night on her pillow.

Thanks to the information contained in Freya's tag, Jones was able to contact the Osbornes who immediately dispatched a chauffeur-driven limousine in order to collect her. It is unclear from press reports but apparently Freya was AWOL for only one night.

Her deliverance did not come without a political price tag, however, in that Jones took full advantage of the golden opportunity presented to her in order to post not only a photograph of Freya online but to accompany it with a blast at Osborne for his disgraceful neglect of the homeless. Regrettably, there is not any evidence to suggest that the dressing down that he received from her has had any impact upon his policies.

Much more importantly, it is doubtful that he even realizes just how rare it is to locate a lost cat once, let alone twice. "It's wonderful when you read about these reunions, but unfortunately for ninety per cent of lost cats, there is no returning home," Lorie Chortyk of the BCSPCA somberly pointed out to The Province of Vancouver on January 2, 2011. (See "Cats Rarely Come Back.")

The dangers associated with Freya's occasionally getting lost pale in comparison to the menace posed by London motorists. In particular, she is known to be a regular at the Red Lion located at 48 Parliament Street (a  continuation of Whitehall under a different name) and a little less than half a kilometer  removed from home. "...she also likes to spend time in the bar. On many an evening she can be found in Westminster's favored political watering hole, the Red Lion, despite having to cross four lanes of traffic to get there," is how Oliver Wright of The Independent described her perilous trek on June 7, 2013. (See "Lost Pet or Double Agent? Meet Freya, the Roving Tabby of the Treasury.")"Apparently at the end of the evening the barmaids regularly have to carry her back home."

Freya and Larry

Even more astonishing, Osborne is acutely aware of just how much danger he is placing her in through his abject neglect of her. For instance, back in February he publicly acknowledged that she was a regular at the bar. (See YouTube video of February 28, 2014 entitled "Fuller's Red Lion, Westminster, Is Reopened by George Osborne.")

She also has been sighted backstage at the Trafalgar Studio Theatre at 14 Whitehall, also half a kilometer from home but in the opposite direction from the Red Lion. Her roaming around the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Cabinet Office at number 10, and Exchequer do not pose much of a threat to her safety in that they are closely situated together and on the same side of Whitehall.

That is not meant to imply that even Downing Street itself is completely free of dangers as the aforementioned Humphrey discovered back in the 1990's when he came within an eyelash of being run down and killed by a limousine lugging around the ultimate political whore, Bill Clinton. (See Cat Defender post of April 6, 2006 entitled "Humphrey, the Cat from 10 Downing Street Who Once 'Read' His Own Obituary, Passes Away at 18.")

The failure of Old Blighty's political elites to better protect their resident felines is made all the more inexcusable by the petit fait that it would be rather easy and inexpensive for them to create a safe haven around numbers ten and eleven for Freya, Larry, and all future cats to roam. The area already provides enough gardens and public buildings in order to furnish them with plenty of fresh air, sunlight, exercise, and mental stimulation all within a safe and secure environment.

All that is needed would be to extend the height of the fences and walls which surround the compound and to install netting on the top. Aesthetics are not an issue given that Downing Street has been closed to the public since 1989.

An even better solution would be for the authorities to go whole hog and close Whitehall and the City of Westminster to all vehicular traffic. The time has come to remove both murderous motorists and their greenhouse gas emitting noisy machines from the inner cities and to transform those areas into pedestrian malls.

Neither proposal would be too much to ask especially considering how all recent occupants of Downing Street have so nakedly exploited their cats as valuable political props while simultaneously demonstrating little or no regard for their personal safety and well-being. Almost as shameful, no animal protection group in England is willing to so much as even contemplate holding them accountable under the anti-cruelty statutes.

The cold shoulder that Cameron and his minions have shown Larry over the years is a good case in point. Back in 2009 when he was still in the opposition and only daydreaming of political power and glory, Cameron put the kibosh on any notion of there being a resident feline in any new government that was led by him.

Freya at Home

By the time that February of 2011 had rolled around he had changed his tune and had consented to adopt Larry from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in south London. (See Cat Defender post of July 21, 2011 entitled "Larry Faces Many Challenges and Dangers in His New Rôle as 10 Downing Street's Resident Feline.")

It did not take long, however, for Larry to wear out his welcome and for Cameron and his cronies to start belittling and sniping at him at every opportunity behind his back. (See Cat Defender post of November 28, 2011 entitled "Larry Is Persevering as Best He Can Despite Being Constantly Maligned by Both Fleet Street and the Prime Minister's Duplicitous Staff.")

A fork in the road of sorts was reached last year with the publication of Matthew d'Ancona's tome, In It Together. In the tell-all exposé, d'Ancona claims that Cameron does not care for Larry because he has failed to solve the rodent problem plaguing his residence and leaves cat hairs on his expensive suits. The prime minister also apparently does not even like the smell of cat food.

Once news of Cameron's reported antipathy toward Larry became public fodder a "Save Larry" campaign was launched on Twitter and that, at least for the time being, has saved both his job and home. "I can set everyone's mind at rest in the #Save Larry campaign," Cameron tweeted. "He and I get on purr-fectly well. The kids love him too."

Should the Tories fail to prevail in next year's upcoming election, Cameron will no longer need Larry and that very well could end up costing him his home. In that case, he most likely would be either sent back to Battersea or fobbed off on to an obliging staffer.

That is precisely the cruel fate that befell Humphrey. Although both the Iron Lady and Major welcomed him with open-arms, Tony Blair's resident witch, Cherie, could not bear the sight of him.

The miserable old hag, whom the Countess of Wessex once referred to as "horrid, horrid, horrid," first attempted to have him done in and when that ploy was foiled by Fleet Street she had him exiled to the residence of an unidentified staffer. "Humphrey is voting with his paws," a Tory spokesman chimed in on that unhappy occasion. "After eight happy years under a Conservative government he could take only six months of Labor."

He died in obscurity in March of 2006, but never has been forgotten. "He has caught numerous mice and the odd rat," a Cabinet dossier compiled on him and released in 2005 stated. "By a perhaps unfair comparison, Rentokill have been operating for years and have never caught a thing."

Freya Is Given the Bum's Rush by a Foreign Office Flathead

The document went on to famously describe that wonderful feline gentleman as "a workaholic who spends nearly all his time at the office, has no criminal record, does not socialize a great deal or go to many parties and has not been involved in any sex or drug scandals that we know of." (See The Times of London, March 20, 2006, "Political World Mourns a Killer Named Humphrey" and former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe's loving remembrance of him in The Telegraph, January 26, 2011, "A New Cat for Westminster.")

A simply adorable black and white female named Sybil who was owned by Osborne's predecessor, Alistair Darling and his wife, Maggie, was treated even shabbier than Humphrey. Brought down from Edinburgh by the Darlings on September 10, 2007, she initially was given free rein of the grounds and even had her own basket at the Exchequer.

"Sybil has been brought down because there are mice here," Darling declared upon her arrival. "She's a really good mouser." (See Cat Defender post of September 19, 2007 entitled "After a Dreary Ten-Year Absence, Number 10 Downing Street Has a New Resident Feline and Her Name Is Sybil.")

Alas, even that valuable and much sought after talent was not nearly enough in order to save either her job or home because Darling's boss, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, turned out to be a closet cat-hater. Sybil accordingly lasted only six months on the job before she was unceremoniously sacked and cruelly fobbed off on an old acquaintance of the unconscionable Darlings.

Like Humphrey before her, she either died or was deliberately killed off by her new owner on July 27, 2009 while living in obscurity. (See Cat Defender post of August 13, 2009 entitled "Sybil, 10 Downing Street's Former First Feline, Dies Unexpectedly from an Undisclosed Illness.")

"As numerous thinkers have noted, cats often have a soothing quality on their owners," is how The Independent began its July 29th eulogy of her. (See "Feline Friends.")"Granted, the economy is looking as shaky as a newborn kitten at the moment, but imagine what condition it might be in
without Sybil."

The one thing that both Freya and Larry have going for themselves is that they are owned by Tories who are occasionally more favorably disposed toward the species than their counterparts in the Labor Party. Additionally, Osborne appears to genuinely like animals in that in addition to Freya his family has a budgerigar named Gibson, a Bichon Frise named Lola, a hamster, and a pair of goldfish.

The odds therefore are at least even that he will choose to hang on to Freya regardless of what happens next year at the polls. Unless he dramatically mends his irresponsible ways and takes considerably better care of her, however, that is going to be a moot point.

Freya Makes Yet Another Daring Escape

In spite of their myriad of shortcomings and failings as guardians, English prime ministers and chancellors of the Exchequer treat cats slightly more humane than their utterly nauseating American counterparts who care little or nothing about the species, animals in general, and Mother Earth; au contraire, the only things that they care about are sucking up to the rich, lining their pockets, killing people, and telling lies.

For example, George H. Bush's cat, India, was either killed off or died from natural causes shortly before he and his family vacated the White House. (See Cat Defender post of January 24, 2009 entitled "India Dies at Age Eighteen Leaving the White House Without a Resident Feline for
the First Time in Sixteen Years.")

Callous and uncaring Clinton fobbed off Socks on his secretary, Betty Currie, as soon as he no longer had any further need of him. (See Cat Defender posts of December 24, 2008 and March 12, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Former First Cat Socks Is Gravely Ill with Cancer and Other Assorted Maladies" and "Too Cheap and Lazy to Care for Him During His Final Days, Betty Currie Has Socks Killed Off and His Corpse Burned.")

The utterly worthless stooge currently ensconced in the White House not only does not want anything to do with cats but has sat idly by while the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has launched en masse extermination campaigns against them on San Nicolas, the Florida Keys, and elsewhere. He also has sanctioned the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service's unwarranted intrusion into the private lives of Ernest Hemingway's world famous polydactyls in Key West. (See Cat Defender posts of February 24, 2012, June 23, 2011, and January 24, 2013 entitled, respectively, "United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Humane Society Hoist a Glass in Celebration of Their Extermination of the Cats on San Nicolas Island,""Wallowing in Welfare Dollars, Lies, and Prejudice, the Bloodthirsty United States Fish and Wildlife Service Is Again Killing Cats in the Florida Keys," and "The Feds Now Have Cats and Their Owners Exactly Where They Want Them Thanks to an Outrageous Court Ruling Targeting the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.")

All of those atrocities are in addition to the tens of thousands of bobcats, cougars, jaguars, lynxes, ocelots, and other large cats that are being systematically liquidated each year by the USDA's Wildlife Services and other federal agencies. Even more alarming, the fate of both small and big cats alike is not even part of the political discussion; the president and the feds merely assume that they have a divine mandate to do with them as they see fit.

Although politicians are entitled to own cats just like everyone else, they should be required by law to not only take proper care of them but to respect their inalienable right to live. Furthermore, in failing to fulfill their moral and custodial responsibilities to them, they are setting a simply horrible example for their constituents.

An individual can, either wittingly or unwittingly, fail a cat in countless ways but to knowingly allow one to regularly venture out into traffic on a busy, four-lane road constitutes the very epitome of animal cruelty and Osborne accordingly should be held accountable for  his shameful negligence. Unlike with Larry, however, there does not appear to be a "Save Freya" campaign on the horizon and that makes her situation all the more desperate because her precious life is rapidly slipping away like sand through an hourglass.

Photos: The Independent (Freye up close, at home, in the street, and scaling a wall), Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Facebook (Freya beside a statue), The Reporter (St. Helens' cat with her rescuers), Political Pictures (Freya's diamante collar), and The Telegraph (Freya and Larry).

Freya Relaxing

"Freya had to go, it just wasn't working out. She was a handful. Poor Lola was scared of her."
-- an unidentified Downing Street source

Freya's short-lived reign as the first cat of the Exchequer has come to an abrupt end. Fortunately, she has not been either run down and killed by a hit-and-run motorist or gotten lost again as it often was feared would be her undoing.

Rather, she is still alive and, as far as it is known, in good health. She is no longer living at 10 Downing Street, however, because her guardian, Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Georgie "Porgie" Osborne, has sent her packing.

The end it is believed came sometime last week when Osborne fobbed off  the care of the dashing five-year-old brown female onto the hands of an unidentified member of his staff. All that has been revealed about that arrangement is that she is now residing at an undisclosed location somewhere in Kent.

The official word from Osborne and his flunkies is that Freya was gotten rid of for her own good. "The car accident could have been fatal, and as a result the family took the view that she was at too much risk living in Downing Street," an unidentified aide to the chancellor confided to the Daily Mail on November 8th. (See "Chancellor's Pooch, a Moody Mouser -- and an Uneasy Coalition That Was Doomed from the Start: George Osborne Evicts Freya the Cat for 'Bullying' His Bichon Frisé Dog.")

By that the official was referring to Freya's having been run down by a motorist on Whitehall Road back on August 7th. (See Cat Defender post of November 10, 2014 entitled "Freya, the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Resident Feline, Cheats Death Once Again When She Survives Being Run Down and Injured by a Motorist but Her Good Luck Cannot Last for Much Longer.")

Quite obviously, Osborne and his subalterns are lying through their rotten teeth about why Freya was given the bum's rush. First of all, the accident occurred more than three months ago and if Osborne and his irresponsible family had cared so much as one whit about her safety and well-being they would have taken action back then.

Secondly, Osborne's contorted logic and warped morality is nothing short of stupefying in that no caring individual ever would abandon a cat under the pretext that by doing so he was saving her life. For example, millions of cat owners all over the world are forced to deal with the perils that threaten the lives of cats that roam but very few of them either choose Osborne's expedient or indulge in his outrageous, self-serving lies.

With all of his millions, Osborne easily could have assured Freya's safety simply by either confining her indoors or extending the height of the walls and fences that surround Downing Street and installing netting on top of them. He additionally could have either trained her to walk on a leash or assigned one of his numerous underlings to have accompanied her on her rambles. Any genuine lover of the species would have been more than willing to have spent the extra money and to have gone to the additional trouble that would have entailed in order to have kept her both safe and happy.

The Other Female in Osborne's Life, Lola

That is perfectly obvious to any thinking individual but it is the Daily Mail that the world has to thank for exposing Osborne as a bare-faced liar. "Freya had to go, it just wasn't working out," an unidentified Downing Street source confided to the newspaper in the article cited supra. "She was a handful. Poor Lola was scared of her."

Lola is a white Bichon Frisé that Osborne acquired less than a year ago and, admittedly, loves madly. "Some early toilet training issues (which are common with this particular breed )... but we don't care," he tweeted recently according to the November 9th edition of The Independent. (See "George Osborne's Family Cat Freya Sent from Downing Street to Kent.")"We love her."

That indeed surely must be the case because Osborne claims that he gets out of bed in order to walk her at both midnight and 6 a.m. He even earlier this year arranged for her to tie the knot in a mock wedding ceremony with another Bichon Frisé named Snowy that is owned by the Conservative Party's chief whip, Michael Gove.

Osborne supposedly decided to get rid of Freya because she had been bullying his beloved Lola but that allegation is difficult to believe. First of all, Freya was seldom home in order to bully anyone even if she had been so inclined. Secondly, the two pets were kept segregated on separate floors.

While it is conceivable that they may have had a few run-ins while passing on the stairs, they likely did not amount to anything serious. The Osborne camp's version of events also strains credulity in that it is always dogs that harass, and often kill, cats and not vice-versa. Most telling of all, it is simply beyond belief that Freya ever would want anything to do with Lola in the first place.

For whatever it is worth, another unidentified aide to the chancellor has shied away from the bullying story while simultaneously going to great lengths in order not to deviate from number 10's original pack of lies. "The issue was her tendency to roam, not her relations with Lola," he told the Daily Mail in the article cited supra. "She has ended up all over the place: Trafalgar Square, the Red Lion pub and miles south of the river. It was getting too much and it was only a matter of time before she was seriously hurt."

It is unclear at this juncture what affect, if any, Freya's ouster will have on the fate of Prime Minister David Cameron's much maligned resident feline, Larry. (See Cat Defender posts of July 21, 2011 and November 28, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Larry Faces Many Challenges and Dangers in His New Rôle as 10 Downing Street's Resident Feline" and "Larry Is Persevering as Best He Can Despite Being Constantly Maligned by Both Fleet Street and the Prime Minister's Duplicitous Staff.")

Nevertheless, her departure is anything but a good omen as far as he is concerned. With politicians being the opportunistic old slugs that they are, Cameron no doubt is closely monitoring the public's reaction to Osborne's shabby mistreatment of Freya before plotting against Larry.

In Freya's case, it is not known either if Osborne paid the staffer to take her off of his hands or who is footing the bill for her food and veterinary care. "A kind member of staff agreed to look after her and the family will get regular updates and photos," is all that a Downing Street source was willing to reveal to The Independent in the article cited supra. "The family are (sic) very grateful."

Freya Where She Felt Most at Home, on the Street

Truer words never have been spoken in that the Osbornes surely must be still popping the champagne corks in celebration of finally getting shed of the cat that they never really wanted in the first place. Even their token commitment to receive photographs and periodic updates on Freya's progress has been passed off as a concession to Osborne's children, thirteen-year-old Luke and eleven-year-old Liberty.

Osborne, quite obviously, could care less about what becomes of her. Even his children's supposed interest in her well-being sounds disingenuous in that it is highly unlikely that he would have been able to have so easily abandoned Freya again if they had, in reality, cared anything about her.

Osborne's troubles are now over but it is an entirely different story as far as Freya is concerned in that the changes she is undergoing in both scenery and ownership in no way address the underlying issues that have plagued her troubled life. First of all, it is not known who will be looking after her in that it certainly will not be the staffer who will be busy most of the time in London doing Osborne's bidding.

Secondly, it has not been disclosed if she will be confined at her new address or allowed to roam at will. Although it may sound counterintuitive, suburban thoroughfares and country roads often are far more dangerous for cats than congested inner city streets, such as those in Westminster. That is because the former attract considerably more speeders as well as those who run down and kill cats for the sheer pleasure of doing so. There also are fewer peelers patrolling the streets outside of the big cities.

Shortly after her birth in April of 2009, Osborne purchased Freya from an undisclosed source as a present for his children. A few months later, he not only carelessly allowed her to disappear but, worst still, made only a half-hearted effort in order to locate her. Consequently, it was not until June of 2012 that she finally was relocated and returned to him and his family.

So, in effect, this is the second time in less than five years that he has inexcusably abandoned her. Even when she was living underneath his roof he did little or nothing in order to protect and safeguard her life.

It thus could be argued on the one hand that she is far better off to be finally rid of both him and his god-rotten family. Hopefully, that will in deed turn out to be the case but even that happy prospect appears to be a long shot.

Specifically, entrusting her care to anyone who would work for such an irresponsible, cold-hearted, and filthy rotter as Osborne is anything but reassuring. Be that as it may, Freya's fate is now sealed for either better or worse in that there is not a solitary animal protection group in all of England that cares enough about her well-being in order to intercede on her behalf.

Freya as She Was and Will Be Remembered

If a private individual ever were to so neglect a cat as Osborne has done with Freya that person likely would have been arrested long ago and the animal confiscated. It is just too bad that has not happened to him because a little time spent standing in the dock at Old Bailey Bird has been known to sober up even those individuals terminally besotted with power and self-importance. In this case, however, Osborne not only has been allowed to get away scot-free with his hideous crimes but to fob off Freya's care on an unknown individual of his own choosing.

By his simply abhorrent mistreatment of her, Osborne has demonstrated writ large that he looks down upon cats as soulless automatons that big shot like him can neglect and abuse to their hearts' content. On that point his thinking is every bit as wrongheaded as his economics. Freya and all other cats have more soul, class, and dignity than a no-account bum like him ever will acquire even if he should live to be as old as Methuselah.

Even though not a great deal is known about what goes on inside a cat's head, it is nevertheless strongly suspected that their minds works pretty much the same way as those of their human counterparts. In particular, home is everything to them and that is verified by the old Sprichwort which maintains that "dogs belong to people but cats belong to places."

In Freya's case, she has been bandied about so much that by now she hardly knows where she belongs. First of all, she was uprooted from her place of birth by Osborne and shanghaied to live at his house in Notting Hill.

She soon thereafter either escaped or got lost and as a consequence was forced to spend the next three years eking out a living as a homeless vagabond. After that it was on to 10 Downing Street for a little more than two years and now she finds herself in Kent surrounded by strangers.

Being shoved around in such a cavalier fashion surely has exacted a high emotional toll from her and may, just perhaps, explain her Wanderlust. She could be in fact still searching for her original home.

It also is perfectly clear that the Osbornes did everything in their power to make her feel as unwelcome as possible in both Notting Hill as well as in London. Cats that are loved, appreciated, and esteemed do not often leave home of their own freewill.

Although there is not any known connection, Freya is not the only four-legged member of the Osborne household to have done a runner in recent months. For example, back in July the family's hamster broke out of its cage and went on the lam for two weeks before it was found and rescued by Freya.

Freya Was Always on the Outside Looking In

So, it is perhaps not just cats that cannot abide living under the same roof with the Osbornes. (See The Independent, August 8, 2014, "George Osborne's Cat Freya Recovering at the Vets After Being Struck by Car.")

In addition to getting used to a new environment and different people in her life, Freya undoubtedly will miss, at least for a while, visiting her old haunts in Westminster, especially the Red Lion, as well as all the attention has been ladled on her in the past. In time, however, she will forget about them just as Fleet Street and the world are destined to forget about her.

Sooner or later, however, a brief notice will appear out of the blue in the London dailies recording her demise. Most likely, she either will be prematurely killed off by her new caretaker or run down and obliterated by a motorist.

That is precisely how it ended for both Humphrey and Sybil after the elites on Downing Street had exploited them to the hilt and then sent them packing. (See Cat Defender posts of April 6, 2006 and August 13, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Humphrey, the Cat from 10 Downing Street Who Once 'Read' His Own Obituary, Passes Away at 18" and "Sybil, 10 Downing Street's Former First Feline, Dies Unexpectedly from an Undisclosed Illness.")

She will not be quite so easily forgotten, however, by her legions of admirers around the world who are going to dearly miss seeing her and reading about her exploits. It truly has been a rare and distinct pleasure to have been able to have shared her life, even if it has been only from afar.

She therefore truly belongs to, not Osborne and his cronies, but rather to the world. If there was so much as an ounce of justice in life, her fate would have been decided by those who love and admire her instead of a second-rate old political hack who merely exploited her for his own benefit.

It has been said before but it nonetheless bears repeating: real men do not hide behind cats and small children. They do not shirk their moral responsibilities and they do not tell outrageous lies.

The only thing positive that can be said about old Georgie "Porgie" is that it is somewhat poetic that a blighter who has spent his entire life down on his knees sucking the pennies out of the cracks of the rich now has been relegated to scooping up dog shit. While he is at it he might as well go whole hog and thus join Lola in a little copraphagia.

Photos: the Evening Standard (Freya relaxing) and The Independent (Lola, Freya in the street, up close, and outside number 11).

Anne McIntosh

"It is a matter of fact that the mouse population at Westminster is spiraling out of control. Will the Right Honorable Gentleman review his decision and, using the same model adopted by ten and eleven Downing Street, consider having a rescue cat that can be released in the evening to keep the mouse population under control?"
-- Anne McIntosh, Conservative MP from Thirsk and Malton in North Yorkshire

Although the world famous resident felines of Downing Street, both past and present, receive a lion's share of Fleet Street's attention, cats also are a hotly debated topic down the street at the Palace of Westminster where their invaluable service as mousers is dearly coveted by some members of Parliament (MPs). That is especially the case in that it is claimed that the joint is overrun with mice who deposit their excrement all over the place and even gnaw into official documents.

Whereas a considerable amount of palaver is devoted to the use of the Downing Street cats as mousers that is clearly a well-orchestrated public relations charade. That is not to say that the official residences of the prime minister and the chancellor the Exchequer do not have mice but that problem is handled by professional exterminators.

The cats, on the other hand, are kept in order to not only put kinder, gentler, and more civilized public faces on some pretty unsavory characters but also to temporarily take citizens' minds off of some of the more disquieting political and economic realities of the day.

By contrast, the ongoing debate in Parliament appears, at least from afar to be much more genuine and practical in that any cats employed there as mousers would belong to that body as a whole instead of to individual politicians and that in turn would make it far more difficult, but by no means totally impossible, for any member to exploit their presence for personal political gain. That analysis of the situation is buttressed by the fact that in comparison to the executives on Downing Street individual MPs receive comparatively little media exposure.

In the past the palace has employed cats as mousers including an unidentified feline who was so proficient that it reportedly caught up to an astounding sixty mice per night. Due to ailurophobia and some MPs being allergic to them, the facility currently relies exclusively upon professional exterminators, either for better or for worse, in order to control the rodent population.

Consequently, the only known current resident feline is a gray cat named Order who is owned by the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. While it is not known if Order is used on rodent patrol, it is doubtful that a single feline would be capable of policing the sprawling estate.

Pauline Latham

Predictably, the issue has divided parliamentarians along party lines with the Conservatives being largely in favor of bringing back the cats while both Laborites and the Liberal Democrats are adamantly opposed to their return. Also, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in south London, which supplied Prime Minister David Cameron with his current resident feline, Larry, back in 2011, has become unwittingly embroiled up to its eyeballs not only in the tug-of-war itself but the internecine nature of English politics as well.

"I am thrilled and delighted to work with Battersea Dogs and Cats Home," Anne McIntosh, a Conservative MP from Thirsk and Malton in North Yorkshire, declared to The Independent on January 28th. (See "Cats Poised to Descend on Parliament to Help Rid Westminster of Vermin.")"In my view, provided the situation was controlled with care, particularly considering the welfare of those allergic to cats, the best way to control and eliminate the mouse problem in Parliament would be a rescue cat."

Her proposal quickly was seconded by her colleague in the House of Commons, Pauline Latham, a Conservative from Derbyshire. "Battersea Dogs and Cats Home do a fantastic job, and I would certainly love to have one of their rescue cats come and take care of the mouse problem in my office," she added to The Independent.

In response to the politicians' plea for assistance, Battersea initially offered to dispatch a three-year-old tuxedo named Jill, an orange four-year-old male named Finn, and a one-year-old tortoiseshell named Bloom to work as palace mousers. Unfortunately for the cats, the Commission which runs the Palace vetoed that idea and it is not known what ever became of either them or their hopes for new leases on life.

Undeterred, McIntosh has continued to press her case. "It is a matter of fact that the mouse population at Westminster is spiraling out of control," she told Viscount Thurso (né John Archibald Sinclair), a Liberal Democrat who represents Caithness, Sutherland, and Easter Ross in the Scottish Highlands, during debate on October 22nd according to the Daily Mail's October 23rd account of the proceedings. (See "Vermin in the Commons...Call the Squeaker!") "Will the Right Honorable Gentleman review his decision and, using the same model adopted by ten and eleven Downing Street, consider having a rescue cat that can be released in the evening to keep the mouse population under control?"

Thurso, however, was not about to be swayed. "Measures are being taken to combat that through pest control," he retorted. "Given the scale and size of the estate, it would be necessary to have a great number of cats to make any impact."

There are several problems with Thurso's bluster. First of all, the professional exterminators are not any more up to the job than were Vincent Price and his colleagues on "Three Skeleton Key," which aired several times during the 1950's on old-time radio's outstanding theatre of thrills, Suspense. Secondly, he is guilty of deliberately distorting the number of cats that would be required in order to get the rodent infestation under control.

Bloom, Finn, and Jill: Where Are They Now?

All of that would have been bad enough if he had had the bon sens to have stopped there but he could not resist to temptation to make jest of McIntosh's proposal. "Having a herd of cats on the parliamentary estate would present a number of difficulties," he continued. "I am also advised by my own chief whip that herding cats is quite difficult."

Thurso obviously considers himself to be a part-time comedian and a full-time cutie-pie. His words and actions, however, expose him to be little more than a dishonest smart aleck.

That is because if Latham's plan were implemented, the care and supervision of the cats would be the personal responsibility of individual legislators and neither any herds nor herding would be necessary. Plus, their presence would be required only in specific offices and establishments, such as restaurants and bars, with significant rodent problems.

Of course, it is conceivable that it is precisely that aspect of Latham's proposal that Thurso fears the most. While it is not known if a per se cat vote does in fact exist, the political hacks on Downing Street clearly have demonstrated the numerous benefits of owning one.

"If mice can be close to the source of food and pose a health hazard, one would think it would be perfectly sensible to introduce a cat to keep the mouse population down." McIntosh, apparently familiar with the old Norwegian Sprichwort which counsels that "it is better to feed one cat than many mice," added in vain.

Similar arguments have been raised to no avail all over England, in New York City, Carson City, Salem, and elsewhere. (See Cat Defender posts of October 23, 2008, April 20, 2006, February 17, 2009, and May 21, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Pecksniffian Management at Swindon Pub Plies Ember with Food and Then Gives Her the Bum's Rush,""Molly Is Finally Rescued After Spending Two Weeks Trapped Inside the Walls of an English Deli in Greenwich Village,""Health Department Banishes Smallcat from Popular Carson City Restaurant but Her Feisty Owner Is Putting Up Quite a Fight," and "Salem, Massachusetts, Is Going After Cats Again Much Like It Did During 1692 Witch Trials.")

In spite of the soundness of her reasoning on that point, McIntosh is terribly wrong in striving to emulate the simply abhorrent example set by the politicians on Downing Street. As intelligent and sentient beings, cats are entitled to not only exemplary treatment but their care and well-being requires a lifetime commitment.

Viscount Thurso

They are not Flying Dutchmen to be bandied about by unscrupulous politicians who merely use, abuse, neglect, exploit, and then casually discard them like yesterday's newspapers once they no longer have any use for them. That is precisely what the no-good rotters on Downing Street have done with Humphrey, Sybil and, most recently, Freya. (See Cat Defender posts of April 6, 2006, August 13, 2009, and November 13, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Humphrey, the Cat from 10 Downing Street Who Once 'Read' His Own Obituary, Passes Away at 18,""Sybil, 10 Downing Street's Former First Feline, Dies Unexpectedly from an Undisclosed Illness," and "Gutless Georgie 'Porgie' Osborne Gets Rid of Freya but in Doing So Lies About the True Reason Behind His Second Cruel Abandonment of Her.")

That also likely is destined to be Larry's cruel fate. (See Cat Defender posts of July 21, 2011 and November 28, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Larry Faces Many Challenges and Dangers in His New Rôle as 10 Downing Street's Resident Feline" and "Larry Is Persevering as Best He Can Despite Being Constantly Maligned by Both Fleet Street and the Prime Minister's Duplicitous Staff.")

The Commission's ruling left many cat-lovers disappointed but no one perhaps more so than the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts. "What fun it would have been to see the occasional pussycat strolling the corridors and playing cradle with the clerks' wigs. They could take post-prandial snoozes in the lap of the Father of the House, Sir Peter Tapsell. They could play games with the Westminster Police's anti-bomb sniffer dogs. They could compare claw varnish with the likes of Labor's Luciana Berger (of Liverpool Wavertree)," he fantasized in the October 23rd article cited supra. "But those ninnies in the Commission insist instead on using poisons and traps."

The House of Lords likewise has a recurring problem with mice and back in 2010 they were spotted, inter alia, in both the Peers' Guest Room and Bishops Bar. That in turn prompted Lord Brabazon, the then chairman of committees, to install a so-called "mouse helpline" so that his colleagues promptly could report any and all rodent sightings. (See the Daily Mail, March 5, 2010, "More Parliamentary Fat Cats Needed Fast.")

In spite of that chamber's ban on cats, one intrepid black and white moggy did somehow manage to gain access to the facility on several occasions last autumn. In fact, the cat was captured on film on November 14th. (See The Telegraph, November 15, 2013, "A Cat Burglar in the Commons (sic): the Mysterious Tale of a New Westminster Fatcat.")

Given that the lawmakers are so passionate about cats that do not even belong to them, it should not come as any surprise that they feel even stronger about their own beloved companions. With that being the case, at least one and possibly more MPs apparently do not have any scruples about engaging in a little old-fashioned cheating so long as doing so advances the cause of their cats.

That transpired in early February when Battersea, attempting to raise public awareness of the plight of homeless cats, sponsored an online contest in order to select the cat of the year. In addition to all the notoriety that was expected to go to the winner of the popularity contest, the lucky cat was to be dubbed "Purr Minister."

A Tuxedo Breaches the Supposedly Airtight Security at the House of Lords

Although anyone with access to a computer was eligible to vote, only those cats belonging to MPs and peers were allowed to enter. As things turned out, four Tory MPs and a trio of their Labor counterparts submitted entries. From the House of Lords Laborite Baroness Joyce Gwendolen Quin entered her cat Paul whereas Lord Tom McNally entered his cat, Monty.

Everything went swimmingly until a fourteen-year-old black cat with green eyes named Bosun racked up an astonishing thirty-thousand votes over the course of a seven-hour period. As it later was revealed, many of the votes came from Australia which in itself is rather hard to believe in that the miserable low-life murdering scumbags who run the show down under are currently in the process of systematically exterminating, without apparently the least bit of public opposition, as many as twenty million homeless cats. (See The Australian of Surry Hills, June 2, 2014, "Greg Hunt (Environment Minister) Calls for Eradication of Feral Cats That Kill Seventy-Five Million Animals a Night.")

As it just so happened, Bosun is owned by Tory MP Sheryll Murray of Cornwall and once her competitor, Labor MP Andrew Gwynne of Greater Manchester, got wind of what was afoot he cried bloody murder from every rooftop in London. "I think there's been vote-rigging," he declared to The Mirror on February 11th. (See "MP Sheryll Murray Withdraws Cat Bosun from Westminster Beauty Contest Amid Allegations of Vote-Rigging.") "It is not fair; it is against the spirit of it."

In her defense, Murray denied taking part in any chicanery. "It is very upsetting for me," she told The Mirror. "It is very upsetting for my children, because we have done nothing wrong."

A statement later released by Bosun's campaign raised the possibility that both he and Murray may have been victimized by a put-up job. "Battersea Dogs and Cats Home have already said that there have been a lot of voting irregularities with many candidates and we do not know if this instance was by a well-meaning supporter of Bosun or someone who was trying to frame him," the BBC reported on February 11th. (See "Westminster Cat of the Year Contest 'Hit by Vote-Rigging'.") "It does seem to have been a bit obvious."

Regardless of who was behind the sudden surge in voter support for Bosun, the damage already had been done to his candidacy and Murray reluctantly was forced to withdraw him from the contest. That decision provided Gwynne, who already had withdrawn his cat, Jude, in protest, with a golden opportunity in order to do some gloating.

Bosun Busy at Work Counseling MP Sheryll Murray

"It is such a shame that some people choose to take advantage of the incredible work that Battersea does finding homes for dogs and cats," he pontificated to The Mirror. "Justice has been done. This isn't Soviet Russia. Here in Britain, our cats play by the rules and those that don't will be found out!"

Although the dispute between Murray and Gwynne sans doute tarnished the integrity of the contest, it had even more disastrous results for both of their cats. Bosun, who was named in honor of Murray's late fisherman husband, would have made a splendid Purr Minister as would have Jude who was fished out of a canal in Manchester.

"In good faith, Battersea placed no onerous restrictions on voting. After all, the voting is simply to name a cat," a spokesperson for the charity told the London Metro on February 10th. (See "Ministerial Cat Elections for MPs' Pets Rocked by Cheating Scam.")"So we have been surprised by the voting patterns and will look carefully at how people can vote in next year's competition."

Once the dust finally had settled, a sixteen-year-old couch potato known as Kevin and owned by Labor MP Bill Esterson of the Borough of Sefton in Merseyside ended up taking home the prestigious title of Purr Minister with 29.8 per cent of the vote. "I'd like to thank all the other cats and their staff for taking part in the election and promise to be on the side of hard working cats everywhere," he declared in his gracious acceptance speech according to a February 13th press release issued by Battersea. (See "The Purr Minister Votes Are In and the Winning Westminster Moggy Is Kevin.")

He also is a cat blessed with quite a sense of humor. "Bringing a weight of experience to the job, Kevin will happily represent fat cats everywhere," is how Esterson described his cat in an undated pre-election address posted originally on Battersea's web site and later on his own web page. (See "Sefton Central Labor MP Bill Esterson's Cat Kevin Named Purr Minister" at billesterson.org. uk.)"He takes a laissez fur approach to life in general but fights hard to be top cat in our household against recent feline arrivals. He has sixteen years of eating and (mostly) sleeping to call on as valuable experience."

Kevin's ascendancy also allowed Lindsey Quinlan of Battersea to expeditiously dispose of all the difficulties that had plagued the contest from the start by uttering what has to be the understatement of the year. "Here at Battersea we know the British public love their cats and we're so pleased to see that our politicians do too," she declared unabashedly in the press release cited supra. "The inaugural competition was certainly memorable and we hope Kevin enjoys his exciting year as our first Purr Minister and we wish him well!"

The Ultimate Winner, Purr Minister Kevin

The other competitors in the contest were a cat named Tommy who is owned by Tory MP Greg Knight of East Yorkshire, Scaredy-Cat owned by Labor MP Sarah Champion of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, Parsnip owned by Tory MP Mark Spencer of Sherwood in Nottinghamshire, and Montague owned by Tory MP Justin Tomlinson of Swindon in Wiltshire.

In marked contrast to all the media attention ladled on both the parliamentarians and the big shots on Downing Street, the royal family's treatment of cats receives almost no public exposure. The one notable exception occurred in 2007 when it was disclosed that an intrepid black and white female named Mime was permitted to dine with the queen's corgis at Windsor Castle in Berkshire.

"Mime is part of the furniture," a castle spokesperson said at that time. "Everyone looks forward to her visits."

Owned by then sixty-nine-year-old Kevin Lam, she lives at the Chinese restaurant that he operates a scant fifty yards across the street from the castle. For reasons that are known only to her, she does not care for his cooking.

"She won't eat any of our leftovers," Lam confessed. "She's been going there for about four years."

Even in her case it is the castle's caretakers that she has to thank for both the food and her humane treatment in that the queen and her entourage seldom stay at the facility. The palace guards even have been known to unlock the fortress's Henry VIII gates for her on those rare occasions when they are bolted, such as on the queen's birthday. (See Cat Defender post of November 27, 2007 entitled "Mime Eschews Her Owner's Chinese Fare in Order to Dine with the Queen's Corgis at Windsor Castle.")

Regardless of the hospitality afforded Mime, it is suspected that the royal family is anything but a fan of the species. In particular, the queen is known to be a dog and horse enthusiast.

Even though the five sprawling royal estates that are scattered throughout England and Scotland make inviting refuges for cats than are on the road, it is extremely doubtful that their presence is either welcomed or tolerated. Moreover, none of the royals have been known to either give sanctuary to any homeless cats or to practice TNR.

Mime on Her Way to Have Lunch with the Queen's Corgis

With that being the case, it is likely that any cats that wander onto the royal palaces are liquidated on the spot by the queen's henchmen. If not by them, then either private exterminators or obliging humane groups are inveigled to do the royals' dirty work for them.

In summation, cats and politicians are not, generally speaking, a good mix. First of all, the vast majority of those individuals involved in politics are unwilling to devote the extraordinary amount of time and energy that are required in order to properly care for a cat.

On a more fundamental level, very few of them genuinely love and respect cats. Rather, they only use and exploit them for their own personal and political ends.

Perhaps most damning of all, no politician of note ever has been known to champion the cause of cats; au contraire, they are far better known for defaming and exterminating them en masse. With that being the case, they should not be permitted to get away with exploiting and abusing them as political props.

Rescue groups, such as Battersea, who not only bow and scrape at the feet of the political elites but also actively participate in their hideous crimes against the species are a disgrace to their profession. The first imperative for any halfway legitimate humane group should be to adopt and religiously implement an uncompromising attitude in respect to the inalienable right of all cats to live and implicit in that is a strict ban on all forms of killing including the misnomered practice of euthanasia.

The second imperative should be to provide free, competent veterinary care to any cat that needs it. Their third mandate should be to place all homeless cats in either good homes, sanctuaries, or managed TNR colonies.

Lastly, it is imperative that they take a no-nonsense attitude toward all forms of abuse and neglect and that includes, above all, going after the high and mighty, vivisectors, professors, the military, ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and all others who talk and behave as if they are endowed with a divine right to do with cats as they see fit. To put the matter succinctly, they must put the rights and needs of cats first; the dictates of their wallets and the gruntings of the elites are to be ignored.

Photos: annemcintosh.org.uk (McIntosh), paulinelatham.co.uk (Latham), BBC (Bloom, Finn, and Jill), Keith Edkins of Wikipedia (Thurso), The Telegraph (cat at the House of Lords), the Western Morning News of Plymouth (Bosun and Murray), Bill Esterson (Kevin), and The Sun (Mime).

Spice

“I saw something move in the bag. I didn’t know what it could have been. Out popped the cat’s head. It was pretty cool.”
-- Bob Watterson

Spice is a little kitten with three big secrets. Not the least of which is how did the pretty six-month-old gray and white female ever make it all the way from Albuquerque to Portland in less than five days?

Her second secret is the identity of the person who cruelly and irresponsibly zipped her up in a duffel bag on November 5th and then abandoned her on the doorstep of Threads of Hope, a Catholic thrift shop located at 244 St. John’s Street. From that point forward, her story has been meticulously documented but her past remains shrouded in both mystery and intrigue.

Local handyman Bob Watterson was the first to notice the bag and, mistakenly thinking that it contained a donation, he picked it up and carried it inside the old rag shop. His first inclination turned out to be correct in that it did contain a donation but it was not the type that the historically money-mad Catholics easily could convert into the hard currency that they so desperately crave.

“I saw something move in the bag. I didn’t know what it could have been,” he later told the Albuquerque Journal on November 21st. (See “Albuquerque Kitty Turns Up in Gym Bag in Maine.”)“Out popped the cat’s head. It was pretty cool.”

As far as it is known, neither anyone working inside the store nor passing by on the street outside saw who it was that left behind the bag. Regardless of whatever else that can be said about the dirty deed it certainly was a rather bold undertaking coming as it did not only in broad daylight but during business hours as well.

It also was planned well in advance in that the bag contained both cat litter and canned food. It is far from clear, however, if the choice of the shop was intentional or mere happenstance.

Under the former scenario its selection possibly could indicate that the culprit is a Catholic in that it is difficult to comprehend anyone else being willing to entrust the care of any cat to an institution that for millenniums has meted out nothing but diabolic abuse to members of the species. On the other hand, religion may not have played any role whatsoever in Spice’s plight in that individuals abandon cats all the time, in all sorts of places, and under all types of circumstances.

For instance, some individuals even deposit them both inside and outside of bins that are used in order to collect old clothes and, in Angleterre, bottles and cans. Nevertheless, since so many of these abandonments take place on Boxing Day that suggests that Christmas holds some sort of significance in the lives of the perpetrators of these outrageous acts.

Regardless of the motivation behind abandonments of this type, it seems clear that the culprits look upon unwanted cats in much the same fashion as they do old clothes. Even if their heartfelt desire is to spare their victims trips to the killing fields that masquerade as shelters, that ploy most often backfires.

In a case that bears a striking resemblance to the cruel fate that befell Spice, a seven-week-old calico kitten named Sleepy was sealed up in a brown box on June 24, 2009 and deposited in the heat and humidity on the doorstep of a mattress store at 2555 Grand Army of the Republic Highway in Swansea, seventy-seven kilometers south of Boston. Without either water, ventilation, or food, save for a few morsels of kibble, she surely would not have survived for long without the intervention of store employee Michael Medeiros.

Sleepy. Where Is She Now?

“When I tossed the box on my desk, I heard a meow,” he later recalled. Even after she had dodged that bullet, she nonetheless was incarcerated at the Ernest W. Bell Animal Shelter on Stevens Road and that was the last ever to be heard of her. (See Cat Defender post of July 3, 2009 entitled “Pretty Little Sleepy Survives a Suffocation and Starvation Attempt on Her Life Thanks to the Timely Intervention of a Mattress Store Employee.”)

For ever so briefly it at first appeared that Spice had side-stepped Sleepy’s fate when Watterson took her home to live with him, his wife, teenage daughter, dog, and resident feline. Once she had committed the faux pas of pissing in his bed he however quickly dropped her like a hot potato on November 11th at the Animal Rescue League of Greater Portland (ARLGP) in nearby Westbrook.

As part of the shelter’s routine intake procedure, Spice was scanned upon arrival for an implanted microchip and that is how that it belatedly was learned that she hails from Albuquerque. Her owner, who was contacted three days later by ARLGP, revealed at that time that she had adopted the cat earlier this year from a shelter in Albuquerque and that is likely where the chip was implanted.

The woman, who has chosen to remain anonymous, was unable however to shine much light on Spice’s cross-county misadventures. All that is known is that she resides in a “large apartment complex” and that Spice vanished sometime during the evening of October 31st while she was handing out candy and other goodies to children on Halloween.

With that being the case, what happened to her on that fatal evening constitutes Spice’s third secret. For her part, her owner claims to be every bit as surprised as everyone else that she wound up so far away from home.

“She was floored, absolutely stunned. She doesn’t know anyone in Maine and has never been here, so she had no idea how the cat got here,” Patsy Murphy of ARLGP told the Today Show on November 21st. (See “Lost Cat Trying to Go Home for Holidays after Mysterious Twenty-Three-Hundred Mile Trip.”)“English is not her first language, and she is very shy, but she desperately wants the cat back.”

That may or may not be true but she does not want Spice back badly enough in order to foot the bill for her return. “She does want her cat back,” Murphy’s sidekick, Jeana Roth, affirmed to the Bangor Daily News on November 22nd. (See “Kitten That Went Missing from New Mexico Found in Portland.”)“Unfortunately she doesn’t have the financial means to send Spice across the country home.”

In that regard she is far from being alone because ARLGP also answers the roll call for all those blessed with deep pockets but, regrettably, short arms. Specifically, the charity claims that it does not have so much as a lousy sou to spare in order to transport Spice back home. It thus would appear that a few drops of errant piss are not the only constraint upon the amount of compassion that both guardians and rescue groups alike have to offer a kitten in extremis.

As difficult as it may be for some contemporaries to comprehend, a lack of money was not always the deal breaker that it is today. Veterinarians, physicians, and other professionals used to be more than willing to work with the impecunious and that in turn gave birth to such venerable old practices as paying on time, lay-away plans, and payment in kind.

There even used to be old-fashioned virtues such as generosity, compassion, and liberality. For the most part, however, all of them have gone with the wind; today, the only tie that binds is cold, hard cash.

Spice Incarcerated at ARLGP in Westbrook

Sandwiched in between a representative from the anti-pissing brigade on the one hand and a pair of confirmed tightwads on the other hand, it sure looked like little Spice’s fate had been sealed. No one, however, should ever underestimate the resourcefulness of a group as well-connected as ARLGP.

It accordingly did what it does best and went begging on bended knee to one of its sugar daddies, Jonathan W. Ayers of IDEXX Laboratories, a multinational headquartered in Westbrook that develops and manufactures diagnostic, detection, and information systems for use by both small and large animal veterinarians. Always on the lookout for opportunities in order to burnish both his and his company's public image, he readily agreed to help return Spice home to her owner.

“It really touched my heart,” he told the Portland Press Herald on November 21st. (See “Wayward Kitten Will Fly Home to New Mexico from Maine.”)“She’s a miracle cat, and I felt like I could do something to complete the miracle.”

All of that would have been more than sufficient but Ayers did not stop there, however. “It just immediately struck me that there was a very strong bond between this pet owner and Spice,” he declared to the Albuquerque Journal in the article cited supra without disclosing how that he had arrived at that conclusion. “When I read Spice’s story, I realized she really wanted to go home.”

Initial plans called for Ayers to not only pay for Spice's transportation but also to pony up for a staffer from ARLGP to accompany her. "We don't want Spice to incur any more stress than she already has," he vowed to the Albuquerque Journal.

A quick turnaround also was promised. "We're hoping to get her on a plane within the next two weeks at most, and we know Thanksgiving is next week and it would be wonderful to get her home for the holidays (sic)," Roth told the Portland Press Herald in the article cited supra.

That is not the way things eventually worked out in that it was not until December 4th that Spice actually was put on a homeward bound plane. A lingering common cold that she had been battling has been cited in press reports as the reason for the delay but that may not be the entire story.

After arriving in Albuquerque Spice, who was accompanied by Murphy, was taken by ground transportation to the Animal Welfare Department's eastside shelter at 8920 Lomas Boulevard where she received a homecoming welcome worthy of a conquering hero. The media was on hand in order to record the event for the sake of posterity and the facility was festooned with "Welcome Home" balloons and a Christmas stocking with her name on it was pinned to a poster.

Her mysterious owner, however, was conspicuously absent. She was scheduled to have taken custody of Spice later in the day but that is a rather questionable outcome in that if she truly loved Spice she would not have missed her homecoming for anything in the world.

"She was a big little deal," Murphy told the Albuquerque Journal on December 5th. (See "Well-Traveled Cat Welcomed Home in Albuquerque.")"We got calls from all over from people who wanted to pay to reunite the cat and her family. Calls came from New York, California, Texas, New Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, and Germany."

Spice and Jonathan W. Ayers

It remains unclear, however, who actually paid for what and how many staffers from ARLGP were in Spice's party. The Portland Press Herald reported on December 3rd that it actually was Southwest Airlines and not Ayers who had paid for Spice's flight. Also, Spice was scheduled to have been accompanied by both Murphy and Roth with Ayers footing the bill for their overnight stay in an Albuquerque hotel. (See "Cat from New Mexico That Was Found in Maine Will Fly Home Thursday.")

The Albuquerque Journal, however, claims in the December 5th article cited supra that it actually was Ayers who paid for Spice's airfare and that only Murphy accompanied her. Of course, it is always conceivable that while Murphy was occupied with dropping off  Spice that Roth was living it up back at the hotel with a daiquiri in one hand and a dog-eared copy of Portnoy's Complaint in the other. The paper further claims that the only thing that Southwest contributed was a crate for Spice to ride in but that, even if true, seems to be rather superfluous in that ARLGP surely has plenty of spare pet carriers.

Regardless of what actually transpired, Spice quite obviously did not either need or require two chaperones and that gives rise to speculation that a donnybrook broke out between Murphy and Roth as to which of them was going to get the free trip to Albuquerque. On the other hand, perhaps they simply put their opportunistic noggins together and decided to stick it to both Southwest and Ayres.

That is not nitpicking considering that multitudes of cats are either dying or being systematically exterminated every day of the week because of a lack of guardians, shelter, food, and veterinary care. All the money that both Southwest and Ayres conceivably squandered on flying, housing, and feeding the superfluous staffer could have been much better spent on cats in need. Moreover, such crass, self-serving behavior exposes the true values and priorities of all those involved.

Back in the autumn of 2005 when a thirteen-month-old brown and gray female named Emily from Appleton, Wisconsin, accidentally became trapped inside a shipping container and wound up in Nancy her return was handled much differently. For starters, Raflatac, the laminating and labeling company that had unwittingly imported her, not only tracked down her owners from information contained on her identification tag but also paid her mandatory quarantine fee of $210.

Continental Airlines then magnanimously flew her home in a $6,000 business class seat. Furthermore, the airline certainly did not provide her with any superfluous chaperones.

Rather, George Chiladze accompanied her on the first leg of her flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport, outside of Paris, to Newark. From there on to General Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee she was in the care of Gaylia McLeod.

"I know it is close to the holidays," McLeod acknowledged at that time. "I'm happy to be a part of reuniting Emily with her family." Chiladze felt the same way. "I will make somebody really happy to deliver this poor traveler back home," he said sincerely.

The differences in how Emily and Spice were treated are illuminating. In the former's case, both Raflatac and Continental acted out of compassion and without either any grandstanding or overt self-interest. The same most definitely cannot be said for ARLGP, Ayers, and Southwest who have milked Spice's misfortune for all that it is worth.

Most impressive of all, Emily's eternally loving and grateful owners, Donny and Lesley McElhiney and their then nine-year-old son, Nicky, did not flinch at having to drive one-hundred-seventy-three kilometers to the airport in order to be on hand to throw their arms around her as soon as she was taken off the plane. (See Cat Defender post of December 9, 2005 entitled "Adventurous Wisconsin Cat Named Emily Makes Unscheduled Trip to France in the Hold of a Cargo Ship.")

Spice and Patsy Murphy Meet the Press in Albuquerque

Attempting to make sense out of Spice's biggest secret is not an easy task. Be that as it may, the same rules apply in this instance as they do in solving all riddles and puzzles.

Most important of all, nothing can be taken at face value. In this case, Spice's owner simply could be lying.

For example, Spice could have urinated in her bed and as a result she either abandoned her or gave her away to an acquaintance. In that light it would be interesting to know if she reported Spice's disappearance to either the Animal Welfare Department or the police. Also, did she make either any inquiries in her apartment building or put up any Lost Cat posters?

If she did not deliberately choose to get rid of Spice, it then follows that she either was stolen, accidentally picked up by a cat-lover who thought that she was homeless, or she accidentally, like Emily, became trapped inside some kind of movable object. Although cats have been known to walk tremendous distances in order to return to their homes, Spice most definitely did not walk all the way to Portland in less than five days. (See Cat Defender post of April 27, 2007 entitled "French Chat Named Mimine Walks Eight-Hundred Kilometers to Track Down Family That Abandoned Her.")

She therefore most assuredly transversed the twenty-three-hundred-mile distance using some type of modern conveyance. Considering how quickly that she arrived in Portland, it would seem that par avion would be most logical choice.

Unless she was either transported aboard a private plane or smuggled onto a commercial airliner, that could be easily checked because all major carriers maintain records pertaining to all cats and other animals that fly with them. It is doubtful, however, that the lazy rotters at ARLGP even bothered to look into the matter; on the contrary, they were far too busy plotting how best to exploit Spice's misfortune for their own benefit in order to waste time doing any serious detective work.

With the notable exceptions of service animals and an ongoing pilot project for pets in Illinois, Amtrak does not normally allow animals on board its trains. Its eastbound Southwest Chief does make one daily stop in Albuquerque but that train terminates in Chicago.

Therefore, even if  Spice had been smuggled aboard she and her handler would have been forced to change trains and then to continue on from there to Portland. Even under that scenario it is unlikely that they could have completed such an arduous trek in five days.

BNSF Railway also stops in Albuquerque on its way to Chicago and although cats have been known to hop freight trains by their lonesome, that seems unlikely in this instance due to Spice's tender years. (See Cat Defender post of June 7, 2007 entitled "Rascal Hops on a Freight Train in South Bend and Unwittingly Winds Up in Chattanooga.")

Greyhound operates between Albuquerque and Portland and it is remotely conceivable that Spice could have been smuggled aboard one of its buses. Individuals smuggle cats and small dogs aboard them all the time but that activity is usually confined to its much shorter runs, such as between Manhattan and Atlantic City.

Emily and George Chiladze Aboard Continental Airlines

Since traveling by boat is totally out of the question, that leaves only trucks and automobiles at Spice's disposal. Given that innumerable cats have been known to unwittingly crawl into either commercial trucks or to be carried aboard them after secreting themselves away in packages and furniture, that is a real possibility in Spice's case. (See Cat Defender posts of November 6, 2006 and August 18, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Trapped in a Moving Van for Five Days, Texas Cat Named Neo Is Finally Freed in Colorado" and "Ronaldo Escapes Death after Retailer Coughs Up the Exorbitant Bounty That Quarantine Officials Had Placed on His Head.")

It is even conceivable that she was sent through the mail. (See Cat Defender post of July 21, 2008 entitled "Janosch Survives Being Sent Through the Post from Bayern to the Rhineland.")

If Spice did not travel by truck, the next most likely explanation is that she was transported by car. That assumption is based not only upon the short amount of time that her journey took, but also the circumstances surrounding her abandonment in Portland.

It thus would appear that she was acquired, either legitimately or by nefarious means, by someone in Albuquerque, driven to Portland, and then dumped at Threads of Hope. (See Cat Defender post of July 25, 2014 entitled "Poussey Overcomes a Surprise Boat Ride to Dover, a Stint on Death Row, and Being Bandied About Like a Flying Dutchman in Order to Finally Make It Home to La Havre.")

In the final analysis, it is highly unlikely that the truth ever will be known. Spice's abductor, who could be either a permanent resident of the Portland area or someone merely passing through town, is not about to come forward and make a public confession, her guardian is not talking to the media, and Spice does not speak any language that her human counterparts are able to comprehend.

In spite of the volumes of laudatory media coverage that all of those involved in this affair have received, a closer examination of both the facts and circumstances reveals that none of them are heroes. On the contrary, by their words and deeds they have unwittingly exposed much of what is dreadfully wrong with both cat ownership as well as those individuals and groups who are responsible for their safety, well-being, and health.

In addition to her owner's carelessness, cheapness and, above all, unwillingness to collect her at the airport, Watterson's callous mistreatment and abandonment of Spice is totally inexcusable. First of all, since he blew his stack over a little bit of urine it is frightening to think what he might have done to her if she had either pooped or vomited in his house.

Secondly, by abandoning her at ARLGP he very easily could have initialed her death warrant. No one connected with the organization has been willing to publicly speculate as to what it would have done with Spice if the implanted microchip had not been detected and deciphered, but the possibilities are anything but pleasant to contemplate.

Once it was learned that she was Albuquerque, however, the shelter immediately recognized that it had a proverbial gold mine in both free publicity and donations on its hands and that is the principal reason that it went to such extravagant lengths in order to reunite her with her owner as opposed to getting out the sodium pentobarbital. The free, all expenses paid, late autumn vacation to sunny Albuquerque that Murphy, and possibly Roth, so adroitly finagled for herself was icing on the cake.

Emily Is Reunited with the McElhineys at the Airport

Just how perilously close Watterson came to dooming Spice is perhaps best illustrated by what happened on December 23, 2010 to a gray cat named Jack-in-the-Box from Troy, New York. Because he, like Spice, was urinating outside of his litter box his owner, Robin Becker, fobbed him off onto then forty-eight-year-old Michael T. Walsh of 10 Woodbridge Avenue who in turn had pledged to dump him at a shelter.

Apparently too cheap to even purchase a pet carrier, either Becker or Walsh sealed up Jack in a cardboard box but when he, justifiably terrified to death, let go with another burst of hot, smelly piss that was the end of the line. Instead of proceeding on to the shelter as agreed upon, Walsh promptly deposited him at the curb of One-Hundred-Ninth and One-Hundred-Tenth streets at the junction of Third and Fourth avenues in the Lansingburgh section of town to be collected by the garbageman.

Jack surely would have been either crushed to death by a trash compactor or dumped in a landfill if his plight had not accidentally come to the attention of Melissa Lombardo who was out walking a pit bull named Phoebe that she was fostering. "I was shocked and sad. I felt bad for the cat," she later told WXAA-TV of Albany on December 23, 2010. (See "Abandoned Cat Found 'Miracle on One-Hundred-Tenth Street'.")"It was obviously scared. It was crying."

Lombardo contacted the Troy Police who took Jack to the Troy Veterinary Hospital where he was treated for exposure to the bitter cold that grips upstate New York during that time of the year. Becker later saw a story about him on television and contacted the authorities who subsequently arrested Walsh on December 30th and charged him with three counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty.

As for Jack, he was scheduled to have gone to a new home sometime during the first week of January of 2011. (See Cat Defender post of October 14, 2011 entitled "Chucked Out in the Trash, Tabitha Winds Up in an Oxygen Chamber with Four Broken Ribs, an Injured Lung, and Pneumonia.")

In addition to being cruel and heartless, Watterson also is guilty of being terribly shortsighted in that if he lives long enough he, like just about all men, is almost certain to come down with an enlarged prostate and the incontinence that accompanies the malady. Once that happens he is once again going to be relegated to wearing diapers, pissing all over himself, and stinking up someone else's house.

Unlike Spice, however, his condition is not going to be either temporary or one that he is going to be able to outgrow. In comparison, occasionally being forced to clean up a little cat urine and feces is of no consequence, especially if doing so saves a life.

The case against Ayers and IDEXX is a good deal more sordid. First of all, the company employs nearly six-thousand workers at forty locations around the world and in 2013 it had revenues of $1.38 billion.

Ayers himself knocked down almost four-million dollars last year in salary, stocks, and other assorted perks. Even though he does own four cats, the only thing known for certain that he did for Spice was to pick up her veterinary tab; the largess that he squandered on Murphy and Roth does not count.

Emily and Nicky. Is That Not Worth More Than Money?

His cheapness even extends to fundraisers held by ARLGP. For instance, at an open house held on December 6th IDEXX raffled off a measly $300 Visa gift card and a paid adoption fee for the lucky winner. (See the American Journal of Westbrook, December 4, 2014, "Westbrook Notes, December 4th.")

That is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg, however, as far as Ayers and his colleagues at IDEXX are concerned in that they are god-rotten, scum-of-the-earth vivisectors! Quite obviously, all of the tests, procedures, and instruments that the company develops and manufactures for veterinarians and others must first be tested on cats, dogs, and other animals.

In that light it is imperative that the company be investigated in order to determine where it gets its cats and other animals, the conditions under which they are housed, the tests performed on them, and what ultimately becomes of them. Needless to say, giving a few quid to ARLGP pales in comparison with the innumerable cats that are tortured and killed in IDEXX's laboratories.

The atrocities that take place in its Livestock and Poultry Diagnostics Division surely must trump even those committed by its Companion Animal Group. For example, it is estimated that seven-trillion terrestrial animals are slaughtered each year in the United States alone for consumption and that does not even begin to include the unspeakable abuse meted out to dairy cows and laying hens.

On a more fundamental level, veterinary medicine as it is practiced today is nothing less than a fraud and a disgrace. For instance, small animal practitioners normally will not treat either cats that belong to the impecunious or those that are homeless. (See Cat Defender post of March 19, 2014 entitled "Cheap and Greedy Moral Degenerates at PennVet Extend Their Warmest Christmas Greetings to an Impecunious, but Preeminently Treatable, Cat Via a Jab of Sodium Pentobarbital.")

At the same time they are more than willing to kill off, for a fee, cats that simply have grown either old or incontinent. (See Cat Defender posts of October 18, 2014 and August 27, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Hamish McHamish's Derelict Owner Reenters His Life after Fourteen Years of Abject Neglect Only to Have Him Killed Off after He Contracts a Preeminently Treatable Common Cold" and "After Traveling for So Many Miles on the Bridport to Charmouth Bus, Dodger's Last Ride Is, Ironically, to the Vet Who Unconscionably Snuffs Out His Precious Life at the Urging of His Derelict Owner.")

They also work hand in glove with shelters and rescue groups in the commission of their myriad of crimes. (See Cat Defender posts of January 11, 2012 and December 22, 2011 entitled, respectively, "A Deadly Intrigue Concocted by a Thief, a Shelter, and a Veterinary Chain Costs Ginger the Continued Enjoyment of His Golden Years" and "Rogue TNR Practitioner and Three Unscrupulous Veterinarians Kill at Least Sixty-Two Cats with the Complicity of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC Animals.")

Likewise, the wholesale atrocities committed against animals that are raised for their flesh, milk, eggs, and other body parts would hardly be possible without the able-bodied assistance of large animal veterinarians. Members of this thoroughly immoral profession also experiment on defenseless animals themselves and IDEXX is up to its eyeballs in aiding and abetting them in the commission of their crimes.

For example, with locations in Columbia, Missouri, West Sacramento, and Ludwigsburg in Baden- Württemberg, as well as at its flagship office in Westbrook, IDEXX's Bioresearch division is devoted to testing, monitoring, and studying diseases in research animals. Included in all of that devilry is unspecified genetic research, cold-blooded vivisection itself, and the inculcation of veterinary and graduate students in the ancient art of torturing defenseless animals to death.

As thoroughly reprehensible and patently immoral as all of that is, it has not deterred ARLGP the least little bit from frolicking in the hay with Ayers and IDEXX. "IDEXX is a generous supporter of the ARLGP, and we are very appreciative of their help getting this little lady back to her family," the organization proclaimed recently in an undated press release posted on its web site. (See "Spice, Kitten from New Mexico Mysteriously Lands at ARLGP!")"Please join us in putting our paws in the air for IDEXX and Jon Ayers."

Jack-in-the Box and Veterinary Assistant Natasha Stalker

Besides that, ARLGP is not only cheap but greedy and opportunistic as well. "To support animals like Spice, who come to the ARLGP in need of treatment, shelter, and care, please consider making a donation to our treatment care fund to support our life-saving programs," the organization pleaded in the press release cited supra. "Every dollar makes a difference."

There undoubtedly is much truth in that last declaration but it is suspected that the difference is more often than not reflected in Roth's and Murphy's bank accounts than in the lives of animals in need. As revolting as that may be, it is merely the norm with most animal rescue groups.

For example, when it comes to cases of animal cruelty most of these organizations categorically refuse to even launch investigations. Instead, they content themselves with appealing to the public for donations while offering beau geste rewards for information that they know full well they never will be forced to honor. (See Cat Defender post of January 6, 2010 entitled "Large Reward Fails to Lead to the Capture of the Archer Who Shot an Arrow Through Brownie's Head.")

The organization additionally continues to dishonestly trumpet the value of implanted microchips. "Spice's journey speaks to the importance of microchipping and providing identification tags for your cat or dog," the shelter stated in the press release cited supra. "Microchipping is a low-cost service we provide right here at the ARLGP, for just $35."

Clearly, microchips are just another of its numerous money-making scams in that quite a few entities, such as Animal Humane New Mexico and the city of Albuquerque, sometimes offer this service for free. Even Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in south London is offering the service gratis during the run-up to a new mandatory microchipping law that targets canines and is scheduled to go into effect on April 6, 2016. (See "Battersea's Five-Hundred-Day Countdown to Compulsory Microchipping" at www.battersea.org.uk.)

As it should be perfectly obvious to any thinking person, microchips do not offer cats so much as an inkling of protection against both humans and animals intent upon doing them harm. (See Cat Defender post of May 25, 2006 entitled "Plato's Misadventures Expose the Pitfalls of RFID Technology as Applied to Cats.")

"It's wonderful when you read about these reunions, but unfortunately for ninety per cent of lost cats, there is no returning home," Lorie Chortyk of the BCSPCA told The Province of Vancouver on January 2, 2011. (See "Cats Rarely Come Back.")

Additionally, microchips are sometimes difficult to locate and decipher, the contact information contained in the databases that they are linked up to is not always kept updated, and they have been known to cause cancer. (See Cat Defender posts of September 21, 2007 and November 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "FDA Is Suppressing Research That Shows Implanted Microchips Cause Cancer in Mice, Rats, and Dogs" and "Bulkin Contracts Cancer from an Implanted Microchip and Now It Is Time for Digital Angel and Merck to Answer for Their Crimes in a Court of Law.")

Perhaps most egregious of all, ARLGP is opposed to both homeless cats and TNR. "We hope that the message here is that if you have a stray animal in your neighborhood, use your shelter as a resource," Roth declared to the Bangor Daily News on September 4th. (See "Stray Cat Survives Shotgun Blast from Gorham Police Officer Who Thought Feline Was Rabid.")

Since very few cats that enter shelters alive ever come out in the same condition, it is anything but surprising that ARLGP intentionally fails to disclose its kill-rate on its web site. Although it does place some cats with farmers as mousers, it also is mum on the subject of sanctuaries.

Spice Contemplates an Uncertain Future. Que Será, Será.

Instead of defending and caring for the animals that need it most, ARLGP is guilty of not only accepting receipt of shekels that are encrusted with the blood of murdered animals, such as those given to it by Ayers, but also of sucking up to both the Gorham Police Department (GPD) and Animal Control after they conspired to have a falsely accused and totally innocent cat named Clark gunned down in cold blood on August 20th. "We had a meeting with the Gorham Police Department and we talked about communications and working together," Murphy disclosed back in September. "We're happy to work with the Animal Control officer and community to get strays into shelters."

After the way in which those two agencies attacked and nearly killed Clark any halfway legitimate animal protection group would have immediately brought animal cruelty charges against both of them and the fact that ARLGP freely chose to do the exact opposite is just one more staggering indictment against it. (See Cat Defender post of September 27, 2014 entitled "Falsely Branded as Being Rabid by a Cat-Hater, an Animal Control Officer, and the Gorham Police Department, Clark Is Hounded Down and Blasted with a Shotgun.")

It is a difficult lesson for both individuals and groups alike to learn but money is the elixir of life as far as most people are concerned. With that being the norm, it is imperative that individuals and groups that cherishes their independence and freedom have their own sources of funding and that does not include bumming from vivisectors, the government, churches, or anyone else for that matter.

In that respect, ARLGP's sellout to IDEXX, the GPD, and others, stands in stark juxtaposition to the behavior of practitioners of TNR who not only donate their time and labor but also pay for their cats' food, milk, shelter, veterinary care, and legal protection out of their own pockets. Unashamed of a little honest toil, most of them labor at uninspiring, low-paying, dead-end jobs but their sacrifices allow them to maintain both their integrity and independence.

ARLGP's legitimacy as an animal protection group is further tarnished by the petit fait that it does not have to associate with the likes of Ayers and IDEXX. Even Murphy herself has publicly admitted that her organization had dozens of offers from individuals around the world who were willing to come to Spice's aid but yet she shunned all of them in favor of accepting shekels from a vivisector.

It is anyone's guess as to what kind of life Spice has been able to resurrect for herself upon her return to Albuquerque. The very best that can be hoped is that she has not once again gone from the frying pan into the fire.

Perhaps the Animal Welfare Department occasionally will look in on her in order to see how she is doing but even that is doubtful. Murphy may have done some nosing around while she was in town but more than likely she was too busy enjoying herself in order to have been troubled with doing so.

It is difficult to let go of cats, even those that have been encountered only from afar, in that there is always the tendency to worry about them and to wonder how that they are progressing. Be that as it may, Spice is now on her own and must either sink or swim by her lonesome.

In what was destined to be a harbinger of things to come, Spice's ordeal began on All Hallows' Eve which can be a pretty spooky time of the year in its own right. She can be forgiven, however, for failing to realize back then that in this world there are considerably more ghouls and goblins to be found in everyday life than ever have ventured out on that celebrated night of both fun and mischief.

For instance, with Murphy and Roth swooping high and low on their gold-plated broomsticks in search of yet still more shekels, Ayers terrorizing cats and other animals with his horns, long tail, and razor-sharp pitchfork, and Watterson, mop and pail in hand, screaming like a banshee about a little piss, Spice surely must have thought that she had descended into the bowels of Hades. Her unfortunate foray into the macabre world of shelters, their sugar daddies, and those who use them in order to get rid of unwanted cats is, hopefully, at an end but for millions of other animals the horrors that she experienced constitute nothing less than a never-ending nightmare.

Photos: Shawn Patrick Ouellette of the Portland Press Herald (Spice by herself and in a cage), The Herald News of Fall River (Sleepy), ARLGP (Spice and Ayers and a contemplative Spice), Dean Hanson of the Albuquerque Journal (Spice and Murphy), Christopher Ena of the Associated Press (Emily and Chiladze), Kirk Wagner of the Appleton Post-Crescent (Emily's homecoming and with Nicky), and Cindy Schultz of the Albany Times Union (Jack-in-the-Box and Stalker).

The calendar year 2012 has long since come and gone but it is never too late in order to take a look back at some of its top stories. The thing that readily stands out about it is the cavalier manner in which cats, their owners, and caretakers continued to be victimized by both criminals and the courts around the world.

In the United States, the feds were handed a major victory over Ernest Hemingway's polydactyls in Key West by their buddies who sit on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta while Virginia's utterly disgraceful excuse for a judicial system went overboard in order to shield a rogue cop from punishment after he savagely bludgeoned to death an already severely injured cat. In Angleterre, the courts continued to put their stamp of approval upon the killing of cats by both bird lovers and gardeners.

Christians also continued to perpetrate their age-old crimes against cats but they were joined in 2012 by a reporter from NBC Philadelphia who went out of his way in order to have the lives of six newborn kittens extinguished in southern New Jersey. A shelter in Massachusetts killed off Sally while still publicly professing to be a no-kill operation while veterinarians continued to kill cats, such as Hartley, through their gross incompetence and to literally steal others, such as Tazzy, from their owners.

Cats were murdered, frozen in ice, and then exhibited to the public in British Columbia and a thief in Washington State cost a homeless man the continued companionship of his beloved cat, Herman. Finally, not satisfied with merely eradicating the cats on San Nicolas Island, the utterly diabolical United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and their subalterns held a party in order to gloat about their hideous crimes.

For previous year-end reviews, see Cat Defender posts of January 4, 2007, January 11, 2008, February 2, 2009, March 16, 2010, June 20, 2011, and December 20, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Continuing Mass Extermination of Millions of Cats at Shelters Across the World Heads the List of Top Ten Cat Stories of 2006,""Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson's Victory in a Galveston Courtroom Heads the List of the Top Stories of 2007,""The Creation of Clones That Glow in the Dark for Vivisectors to Torture and Kill with Impunity Was the Most Disturbing Cat Story to Come Out of 2008,""Humane Society's Sellout of San Nicolas's Felines to the Assassins at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Was the Biggest Cat Story of 2009,""Rocco's Abduction, Systematic Torture, and Cold-Blooded Murder by a Bird-Lover in München Was the Number One Cat Story of 2010," and "The Inexcusable Refusal of Washington's Derelict Legal Establishment to Punish Nico Dauphiné and the Smithsonian for Their Despicable Crimes Was the Most Momentous Cat Story to Come Out of 2011.")

1.)  The Feds Win a Decisive Court Victory Against Hemingway's Polydactyls.

Ernest Hemingway's Former Home in Key West

"We (the museum and its cats) are now at the whim of the agency (APHIS). It's silliness; it's just got insane. This is what your tax dollars are paying for. The agents (of APHIS) are coming down her on vacation, going to bars and taking pictures of cats."
-- Cara Higgins, attorney for the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum

In what can only be described as an utterly outrageous and insane assault upon the liberties of all cats, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, sitting in Atlanta, ruled on December 7, 2012 that the federal government has the authority to regulate the intimate details of their daily existence. Although numerous federal bodies, most notably the diabolical United States Fish and Wildlife Service, have appropriated for themselves an unqualified right to exterminate en masse all homeless cats, the court's holding extends that mandate to include purely domestic felines residing in private home and businesses.

The case also marked the denouement in the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service's (APHIS) decade-long war against the world-famous polydactyls who, along with their antecedents, have resided at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West since the 1930's. To make a long story short, the protracted legal wrangling boiled down to a heated debate over the interpretation of such nebulous terms as "distribution" and "exhibitor" contained within the ghoulishly misnomered Animal Welfare Act (AWA) of 1966.

Writing for a unanimous three-member panel, Chief Judge Joel Fredrick Dubina handed the feds their long sought after victory in a brief thirteen-page exposé in contorted logic that made a mockery of both justice and common sense. "The statute is ambiguous on the question whether 'distribution' includes the display of animals by a fixed-site commercial enterprise," he briefly conceded before lowering the boom on the cats. "And, given Congress's intent to regulate zoos, which are notably stationery and which could potentially exhibit animals that are neither purchased nor transported in commerce, we cannot see how the Secretary's (of the USDA) interpretation of 'exhibitor' is unreasonable."

In arriving at that totally absurd conclusion, Dubina argued, inter alia, that since the museum features images of the cats in its promotional materials it was in fact "distributing" them. Secondly, since the museum charges visitors an admission fee, that in turn made it an "exhibitor" of cats within the meaning of the AWA.

In doing so the court rejected out-of-hand the museum's perfectly sane argument that the cats merely reside on its premises and are not being exhibited to either the public or anyone else for that matter. Secondly, it contended that since they never roam outside the state of Florida they could not possibly be involved in interstate commerce. Thirdly, the museum argued that the AWA did not authorize federal preemption of a field already regulated by state and local animal welfare groups.

None of those arguments were sufficient, however, to dissuade Dubina and his colleagues from doing somersaults around both the law and logic in order to suck up to authority. "We conclude that the museum's exhibition of cats substantially affects interstate commerce," he summed up with a flourish and, presumably, a straight face to boot. Ergo, the feds now have a legal precedent for intruding into the private lives of domesticated cats based upon the authority granted them under the commerce clause which provided the constitutional backing for passage of the AWA.

Judge Joel Dubina

"Notwithstanding our holding, we appreciate the museum's somewhat unique situation, and we sympathize with its frustration," Dubina tossed out as an afterthought in an insultingly disingenuous act of beau geste. "Nevertheless, it is not the court's role to evaluate the wisdom of federal regulations implemented according to the powers constitutionally vested in Congress."

A year earlier on August 12, 2011, he was not nearly so deferential to congressional authority when in State of Florida et al. v United States Department of Health and Human Services, he and his brethren struck down the individual mandate of Obamacare. He accordingly has his jurisprudence all wrong because the flagrant abuse of federal power sanctioned in 907 Whitehead Street, doing business as the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum v USDA, Dr. Charles A. Gipson, deputy administrator of APHIS, clearly dwarfs anything even remotely contemplated in the Affordable Care Act.

For example, the museum now must, inter alia, purchase exhibitor licenses for each of its forty-four or so resident felines. It also is required to tag and individually cage them each night and to provide them with elevated resting areas inside their cages. All of that is in addition to the $200,000 that it already has ponied up in a futile effort to appease APHIS.

For instance, it has spent $15,000 on a sprinkler system and installed a net on top of the wall that surrounds the one-acre estate in an effort to prevent the cats from roaming. APHIS additionally has ordered it to purchase bowls in which to drown bugs.

The agency also wants it to hire a nightwatchman in order to keep an eye on the felines as well as to either extend or string an electrified wire across the top of the perimeter wall. It is unclear what other draconian measures the agency has up its sleeve but given its past track record it is unlikely to be magnanimous in victory.

"We are now at the whim of the agency," Cara Higgins, the museum's longtime attorney, said in defeat. "It's silliness; it's just got insane. This is what your tax dollars are paying for. The agents are coming down here on vacation, going to bars and taking pictures of cats."

That is not all. Besides spying on the cats, APHIS has threatened in the past to steal and, presumably, kill them and the museum has been subjected to numerous surprise and warrantless searches.

Worst of all, Dubina's interpretation of both the AWA and the feds' authority under the commerce clause has far reaching implications that extend well beyond the polydactyls and the museum. For instance, any blogger, author, breeder, groomer, and veterinarian who uses images of cats in their promotional materials and receives compensation from such activities could be subjected to surprise visits and regulation by APHIS. The same also could hold true for library cats and street performers who use animals in their acts.

Patches Has a Go at Hemingway's Old Typewriter

Although the museum's position is indeed dire, it still has at least three arrows left in its quiver. First of all, it could request an en banc rehearing by the appellate court.

Secondly, it could appeal the adverse ruling to the United States Supreme Court. The danger therein lies in the fact that should it lose Dubina's ruling then would be the law of the land as opposed to currently being applicable in only the states of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama which make up the Eleventh Circuit.

Its third option would be to somehow try to convince Congress to rein in APHIS and that appears to be the direction in which the museum is leaning. "We're better off investing our money back into the business and employees," museum president Michael A. Marowski has stated in the past. "So I think we're probably dealing with a legislative issue now."

As he surely is destined to find out for himself, getting Congress to do his bidding will be neither easy nor cheap. Also, given his previous monumental errors in judgment, Marowski needs to proceed with caution.

After all, it was his idiotic decision back in 2003 to employ Debbie Schultz, formerly of the Key West SPCA, to sterilize the polydactyls that precipitated this debacle in the first place. Being a mindless sterilization fanatic, she nearly succeeded in spaying and neutering the entire line out of existence and that in turn forced Marowski into firing her.

In retaliation, she not only ratted out the museum to APHIS but somehow succeeded in convincing it to go after the polydactyls with a vengeance. This entire legal imbroglio from start to finish therefore furnishes yet still another poignant example of how personality differences, prejudice, malice, and rank opportunism so often masquerade as rational and legal discourse. (See Cat Defender posts of January 24, 2013, August 3, 2006, January 9, 2007, and July 23, 2007 entitled, receptively, "The Feds Now Have Cats and Their Owners Exactly Where They Want Them Thanks to an Outrageous Court Ruling Targeting the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West,""USDA Fines Hemingway Memorial in Key West $200 a Day for Exhibiting Papa's Polydactyl Cats Without a License,""Papa Hemingway's Polydactyl Cats Face New Threats from Both the USDA and Their Caretakers," and "Cat Behaviorist Is Summoned to Key West in Order to Help Determine the Fate of Hemingway's Polydactyls.")

2.)  Harrisonburg Cop Gets Away with Bludgeoning to Death an Injured Cat.

Wayne Meadows Sits on the Steps at the Scene of the Cat's Murder

"It is difficult for a judge to second-guess law enforcement. I think the way he killed the cat was in violation. The way he killed the cat was unnecessary."
-- Judge Steven H. Helvin

Bloodthirsty policemen kill cats with impunity every day of the week but seldom has this wicked old world witnessed the degree of savagery that was meted out by one of them to an injured cat on November 11, 2011 on Settlers Lane in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The chain of patently criminal events that led to the forever nameless cat's murder began when it was run down and severely injured by a hit-and-run motorist who remains at large to this very day.

The cat was discovered lying beside the road by kindhearted area resident Wayne Meadows who tried unsuccessfully to secure veterinary assistance for it. In particular, he contacted the Harrisonburg SPCA, Animal Control, and several unnamed veterinarians who, in a portent of events to come, refused to give him so much as the time of day.

At his wit's end, he committed the fatal faux pas of telephoning the Harrisonburg Police Department (HPD) which in turn dispatched twenty-five-year-old hotshot cop Jonathan N. Snoddy to the scene. Instead of compassionately taking the cat to the nearest veterinary office, which was only thirty minutes away, he elected to take matters into his own hands.

Specifically, he proceeded to bash out the cat's brains with his nightstick. Although he was indoors at the time and therefore did not actually witness Snoddy's brutality, Meadows nonetheless did overhear the report of at least twenty blows having been administered. In his defense, Snoddy later swore that he only struck the cat four times and that the other sounds that Meadows overheard had come from him attempting to close his collapsible baton.

The damage done to the siding and woodwork of Meadows' town house also makes it highly probable that Snoddy swung the cat's head against the building in order to make doubly certain that he had bashed out whatever lingering vestiges of life remained in its already battered body. The bloodstains left on the porch bear additional witness to the savagery of Snoddy's handiwork.

When the HPD, the mayor, city council, and local prosecutors all turned blind eyes to this simply outrageous act of premeditated animal cruelty, the Virginia State Police belatedly intervened on January 12, 2012 when they arrested Snoddy and charged him with one count of misdemeanor animal cruelty. On March 8th, he was found guilty in a bench trial presided over by Judge Steven H. Helvin in Rockingham County General District Court but fined only a paltry $50.

Considering Helvin's long and checkered history of shortchanging both cats and their owners, even that small victory came as somewhat of a surprise. Plus, he also is overtly biased in favor of cops.

"It is difficult for a judge to second-guess law enforcement," this supposedly impartial trier of facts candidly admitted. "I think the way he killed the cat was in violation. The way he killed the cat was unnecessary."

Nevertheless, good old reliable Helvin was not about to allow Snoddy to spend any time behind bars. "He doesn't deserve to go to jail," he declared.

No satisfied with merely escaping justice and being allowed to hold on to his job, Snoddy immediately appealed his conviction to the Rockingham County Circuit Court and that was when the already burlesque nature of the proceedings against him quickly morphed into a full-blown circus. The opening event consisted of Judge James V. Lane being chosen to serve as ringmaster and that was followed by his appointment of Page County district attorney Kenneth Leo Alger II to serve as his and Virginia's thoroughly corrupt judicial system's designated stooge.

After deliberately wasting several months of valuable time in order to allow public outrage to abate somewhat, Alger ultimately gave up all pretense of trying the case when he announced nolle prosequi in court on July 30th. In a ridiculously lame attempt designed to excuse his miserable abdication of duty, he then turned around and blamed Snoddy's detractors for spreading what he called "misinformation and sensationalism."

If the four-eyed cattle rancher and part-time law professor at James Madison University had had the bon sens to have stopped there that would have been outrageous enough in its own right, but he went on to express his wholehearted approval of Snoddy's heinous crime. "I think that putting the cat out of his (sic) misery immediately was the most humane thing to do as a result of the animal's broken spine and other internal injuries. As such, I do not feel that his actions rise to the level of criminal conviction of animal cruelty," he blowed long and hard. "It is my belief that under the urgency of the situation and a lack of specific guidelines and training, Officer Snoddy was acting to the best of his abilities."

Some of the Damage Done to Meadows' Town House

The very best that can be said for Alger's absurd reconstruction of events is that in spitting out such utter sottise he made all pathological liars extremely proud. First of all, there was absolutely nothing humane about what Snoddy did to the cat and consequently Alger should be dipped in hot oil for claiming otherwise.

Secondly, as far as it is known a necropsy never was performed on the cat and even if it did have a broken spine that was more likely the result of what Snoddy did to it rather than the motorist. Thirdly, Snoddy was charged with misdemeanor, not criminal, animal cruelty. Fourthly, the only urgency was to have gotten the cat to a veterinarian as soon as possible and certainly not to have bashed out its brains in such a cruel and inhumane fashion.

So, in the end, Snoddy not only walked out of court as a free man but he was able to even hold on to his precious $50 in the process. As far as Alger is concerned, he disgraced both himself and his profession by his unprincipled conduct but in doing so he also sans doute endeared himself to Virginia's political elites as a man who, like Helvin, can be counted on through thick and thin to protect their vested interests.

Much the same thing can be said for Cristobal Opp who prosecuted Snoddy the first time around with all the ferocity of a paper tiger. Old hacks Helvin and Lane also are to be commended for vividly demonstrating that it is utterly impossible for any cat to ever receive a fair hearing in the Old Dominion State. (See Cat Defender posts of March 22, 2012, April 26, 2012, and August 23, 2012 entitled, respectively, "In Another Outrageous Miscarriage of Justice, Rogue Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Is Let Off with a $50 Fine for Savagely Bludgeoning to Death an Injured Cat,"" Virginia's Disreputable Legal and Political Establishment Is All Set to Acquit Jonathan N. Snoddy at His Retrial for Brutally Beating to Death an Injured Cat," and "Cat-Killing Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Struts Out of Court as Free as a Bird Thanks to a Carefully Choreographed Charade Concocted by Virginia's Despicable and Dishonest Legal System.")

While those legal shenanigans were going on, Snoddy's colleague within the HPD, Sergeant Russell Metcalf, shot to death a black, eight-month-old collie-mix named Sadie when she had the temerity to cross his path on April 3rd while he was out riding his bicycle on Robinson Road in the Clover Hill section of town. Metcalf not only failed to report the shooting to headquarters but he also did a runner. Fortunately, he was tracked down by an unidentified neighbor whose description of him later led to his arrest.

Even with that valuable piece of evidence having been delivered to the authorities on a silver platter, it nonetheless took the appointment of Shenandoah County district attorney Amanda Wiseley to even determine that an actual crime had been committed. Once she had made that belated determination, Metcalf finally was arrested six weeks after the fact on May 18th, not by the HPD, but rather the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office.

Indicted on one count of misdemeanor animal cruelty and one count of the reckless handling of a firearm, Metcalf was convicted on both charges in Rockingham County District Court on August 23rd but he was given only a sixty-day suspended jail sentence. For that, he also had good old Helvin to thank who once again came out of semi-retirement in order to shield another obviously guilty cop from getting his just desserts.

As was the case with Snoddy, Metcalf did not have the prerequisite intelligence in order to leave well enough alone but instead appealed his conviction to the Rockingham County Circuit Court where on January 9, 2013 presiding judge Dennis Hupp convicted him once again of animal cruelty but exonerated him on the weapons violation. Even then he escaped with only an $800 fine.

"It appears he did it (in) a cavalier fashion," Hupp is quoted as stating in the January 10th edition of the Daily News-Record of Harrisonburg. (See "Ex-City Officer Fined.")"He would have had to have known it was someone's pet. It was pretty callous."

Sadly, nothing ever will bring back Sadie but her owner, forty-six-year-old Bryan Ware, did receive a measure of satisfaction from Metcalf's conviction. "It was such a senseless act. We feel like we got some justice for Sadie," he said after the first trial. "I don't think he should be a police officer or carry a gun."

Ultimately, Ware's latter wish did come true when Metcalf unexpectedly resigned from the HPD in September of 2012. (See Cat Defender posts of July 18, 2012 and September 7, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Bloodthirsty and Lawless Harrisonburg Police Follow Up Their Bludgeoning to Death of an Injured Cat by Gunning Down a Collie Named Sadie" and "Peripatetic Helvin Rides to the Rescue of Harrisonburg Police Sergeant Russell Metcalf and in Doing So Puts the Judicial Stamp of Approval on His Gunning Down of Sadie.")

Regrettably, all the public outrage churned up by Snoddy's and Metcalf 's outrageous acts of animal cruelty has contributed absolutely nothing toward ending the law enforcement community's senseless killing of cats and dogs. (See Cat Defender post of September 27, 2014 entitled "Falsely Branded as Being Rabid by a Cat-Hater, an Animal Control Officer, and the Gorham Police Department, Clark Is Hounded Down and Blasted with a Shotgun.")

3.)  Polygamists Kill Thomas by Burying Him Up to His Neck in Concrete.

Thomas Trapped in the Concrete That Became His Death Shroud

"Dead cats have been found in our place for years. This is the first time they've done it with a live animal."
-- Issac Wyler

In yet still another damning indictment of the practice of Christianity, a gray kitten named Thomas of undetermined age was buried alive up to his neck in wet concrete inside a cylindrical seven-foot-high steel post on a horse ranch in Colorado City, Arizona, on May 31st. Sadly, his desperate plight was not discovered until the following day when the owner of the property, Issac Wyler, and his assistant, Andrew Chatwin, returned to work on what was destined to be a shed for horses.

The pair was able to extricate Thomas by cutting away the steel post but that still left huge chunks of hardened concrete embedded in his fur. They then tried unsuccessfully to chip away the concrete before finally giving up and telephoning Best Friends Animal Sanctuary forty kilometers away in Kanab, Utah. The charity came and collected him but he died on June 4th as the result of his massive injuries.

Since the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) owns practically every inch of both Colorado City and its sister town Hildale, located across the border in Utah, there can be little doubt that Thomas was murdered by one of the polygamists. That is especially the case in that both Wyler and Chatwin were declared personae non gratae by the sect's now imprisoned spiritual leader, Warren Steed Jeffs, back in 2004.

In an all-out effort designed to force them out of the insular community, Jeffs' confederates have subjected Wyler and Chatwin to a torrent of abuse, harassment, and discrimination. As part of that campaign, their enemies have killed up to a dozen cats and left them on Wyler's ranch in recent years.

"Dead cats have been found in our place for years," Wyler testified in the wake of Thomas's killing. "This is the first time they've done it with a live animal."

The FLDS was quick however to deny any involvement. "It's really inappropriate to try to extend that the FLDS church on the basis of nothing at all, except a dead cat," the sect's lawyer, Rodney Parker, retorted. "They don't even have evidence it was a church member, let alone the church."

A Rabbi Prepares to Dispatch a Rooster to the Devil That He Serves

It is difficult to imagine that the perpetrator of this heinous act could have been anyone else given that no one other than FLDS members are allowed to reside in Colorado City. Plus, the sect's secret police, God's Squad, keep both church members and visitors alike under constant surveillance.

Since concrete hardens quickly in hot weather, "someone had to have been watching us work on this project the whole time," Chatwin added. "Someone had to have done it quickly after I left."

Cats are far from being the only animals to feel the Mormons' wrath. For example, in 2001 Jeffs banned dogs from both Colorado City and Hildale and as a result all of them were rounded up, shot, and buried in a mass grave. Horses and other livestock also have been periodically abused.

Since all city officials as well as the officers of the Colorado City-Hildale Marshal's Office belong to the FLDS, it was a foregone conclusion from the outset that Thomas's premeditated murder never would be investigated. "Throw dirt on it (Thomas)," an unidentified marshal reportedly told Chatwin.

The situation in Colorado City is made all the more perilous due to the glaring absence of not only any animal protection groups but also any practicing veterinarians. Cats, dogs, and other animals thus have been left to the mercy of these morally repugnant Christians.

Doomed Chickens Outside Skware Mosdos shul in Boro Park, Brooklyn

Furthermore, their incestuous breeding of girls as young as eleven years old to old men not only has doomed them to lives as brood mares and sex slaves but also to a form of mental retardation known as Fumarase Deficiency or alternatively as polygamist Down's. Being so incapacitated, they thus are forced to thus spend their entire lives on welfare. (See Cat Defender post of August 8, 2012 entitled "Polygamists Condemn Thomas to a Long and Excruciatingly Painful Death by Burying Him Up to His Tiny Neck Inside a Steel Post Filled with Wet Concrete.")

The hideous abuse and killing of animals in the name of religion is by no means limited to either cats or the Mormons. Rather, it also extends to ultra-Orthodox Jews and totally their inexcusable killing of thousands of innocent redemption roosters during Yom Kippur each autumn.

In an expiation ritual known as Kaparot, celebrants swing the roosters high above their heads three times before slitting their throats. The birds afterwards are allegedly donated to the poor but that is another of the Jews's blatant lies in that their corpses actually are deposited in the trash.

Thousands more of them die from heat exhaustion and other causes as the result of being left outside in the street in small plastic crates without either food or water for days. Even some of the birds that make it inside the synagogues in order to be sacrificed are instead suffocated to death inside plastic bags if they appear to be ailing.

Although United Poultry Concerns has been attempting since 1994 to get this ancient and bloodthirsty practice abolished, it has not made an iota of headway. Like the FLDS, the Jews are so powerful that everyone is scared to death to hold them accountable for their utterly despicable crimes. (See the New York Daily News' print edition, September 30, 2014, "Fowl Brawl. Activists Blast Chicken-Slaughtering Rite.")

That is all the more the pity because chickens, like all other animals, are richly deserving of both man's respect and compassion. Above all, they have an inalienable right to both live and to be free of abuse.

Far from being inanimate, unfeeling, and dumb animals, all of them are individuals with their own personalities, interests, and desires. They even recognize their individual names and come when called.

Furthermore, Christine Nicol of the University of Bristol claims that they outperform not only cats and dogs but four-year-old toddlers as well on a whole host of cognitive and behavioral tests. (See the New York Daily News, August 16, 2013, "Chickens: Smarter Than a Four-Year-Old.")


4.)  Ted Greenberg of NBC Philadelphia Orders the Murders of Six Kittens in Southern New Jersey.

A Pair of Kittens That Were Rescued from Aloe Village

"I just really appreciate the fact that Channel 10 (NBC Philadelphia) helped me and really helped all the neighbors. We couldn't do anything about it but you did and we thank you."
-- Evelyn Koegler

Even on their best of days, the members of the American capitalist media are sorry excuses for journalists. Whenever a television reporter stops merely covering the news, no matter how biased he may be in the first place, and instead not only starts choosing sides but taking an active role in shaping the outcome of events, he most often degenerates into something far worse, such as the cold-blooded murderer of six newborn kittens.

That was the dastardly and utterly unforgivable deed that Ted Greenberg of NBC Philadelphia committed on June 5th when he took it upon himself to call in a private exterminator named Raymond Lane of Animal Capture Control Services of 302 North Leipzig Avenue in Egg Harbor City in order to trap and remove an unspecified number of cats and kittens from the grounds of the nearby Aloe Village Senior Complex at 1311 West Aloe Street. In doing so he was acting at the behest of resident Evelyn Koegler, an inveterate cat-hater.

"It stinks back here," she complained to him and NBC Philadelphia on June 6th. (See "Animal Control Helps Capture Feral Cats.")"You can't open the door because of the smell."

In the same televised interview she even went so far as to ludicrously claim that the cats had attacked her when in fact it was she who had assaulted them. "I was shooing them and one grabbed a hold of my fingers," she bellyached in a pitiful effort designed not only to doom the cats but also to garner sympathy for herself.

She came a good deal closer to the truth earlier when she candidly blamed her cruel and inexcusable behavior on her advanced years. "They need to go. It's too much for old people," she declared to Greenberg and NBC Philadelphia on June 5th. (See "Senior Community Overrun with Feral Cats.")"I can't even get out here when they're here."

Always willing to snuff out innocent lives so long as he is handsomely paid for doing so, Lane hustled on over to Aloe Village where he wasted no time in trapping six kittens. "That's another six cats that aren't going to be breeding," he proudly crowed to Greenberg and NBC Philadelphia in the June 6th article cited supra.

True to his word, he then fobbed them off onto the Atlantic County Animal Shelter (ACAS) on Old Turnpike Road in nearby Pleasantville where their lives promptly were extinguished shortly after their arrival. "Any kitten under the age of three to four weeks is in danger of starvation if they (sic) do not have the means to feed every two or three hours. Unfortunately the shelter is inundated with young kittens," is how the death house's Andrea Ceremele feebly attempted to justify killing them in an interview with Care2.com on June 13th. (See "Death (sic) of Six Kittens Brings Community Together.")"In the shelter setting we do our best to find alternatives to euthanasia. The amount of kittens we see typically outweighs our resources and so we are left with the only humane solution to prevent starvation."

The cold-blooded murders of the six kittens pleased old Koegler no end. "I really appreciate the fact that Channel 10 (NBC Philadelphia) helped me and helped all the neighbors," she cooed to NBC Philadelphia and Greenberg on June 6th. "We couldn't do anything about it but you did and we thank you."

Kitten Killer Ted Greenberg of NBC Philadelphia

For his part, Lane vowed to return the next day and to trap the remainder of the estimated fifty to one-hundred cats and undoubtedly would have done just that if it had not been for the timely intervention of Alley Cat Allies (ACA). "Six newborn kittens have been ripped from their mothers and euthanized at the shelter," the organization's Becky Robinson told Care2.com in the article cited supra. "This cruel approach is not humane and it is not a solution."

Representatives from  the charity then visited the estate where they were able to persuade management to call off Lane and instead to adopt TNR. Almost immediately thereafter twenty-four cats were sterilized, vaccinated, and returned to the grounds. Ten kittens also were spared the hangman by being placed in foster care.

Even then ACA's intervention came way too late in order to save the lives of the dozens of cats and kittens that Lane and the ACAS had trapped and liquidated over the course of the previous three years. As deplorable as all of that was, it is merely the norm as to how cats are mistreated throughout Atlantic County.

For example, a stunning sixty-five per cent of the three-thousand-one-hundred-seventy-nine felines impounded at county shelters during 2012 were killed. (See The Press of Pleasantville, November 23, 2013, "Region's Cats Put Down by the Thousands.")

Almost as alarming, there is not any free sterilization service to be found anywhere in the county. Even the Atlantic County Humane Society, located next-door to the Borgata's gambling den in Atlantic City, charges close to $100 in order to sterilize a cat once all of its mandatory inoculations and other hidden costs are factored into the final price tag. It is in fact so hungry for shekels that it even charges for the disposal of the excised genitalia!

Furthermore, there are not any known cat sanctuaries in the county and those few TNR colonies that do exist are privately financed. Overall, it is difficult to imagine that there possibly could be a worse place for a cat to live in the United States than in Atlantic County.

Quite naturally, Greenberg purposefully neglected to inform his viewers about any of these distressing realities. Au contraire, he deliberately lied to them when he reported that the kittens would be evaluated by ACAS for adoption.

In a staggering indictment of the level of moral depravity and lawlessness that exists in both Atlantic County and the City of Brotherly Love, to this very day neither Greenberg nor his employer have been compelled to answer for their outrageous crimes in so much as the court of public opinion let alone a court of law . (See Cat Defender post of July 7, 2012 entitled "NBC Philadelphia Conspires with a Virulent Cat-Hater and an Exterminator in Order to Have Six Newborn and Totally Innocent Kittens Killed in Southern New Jersey.")

5.)  Sally Is Betrayed and Killed by a Supposedly No-Kill Shelter.

Animal Control Officer Betsy Cruger Visits Sally's Memorial

There is not very much positive that can be said about Homo sapiens to begin with, but their total lack of both appreciation and gratitude for cats that have provided them with unlimited amounts of unconditional love and faithful companionship over the course of many years is, arguably, their most repulsive character trait. Instead of reciprocating by providing them with the top-notch veterinary intervention and the around-the-clock care that they so richly deserve once they become either sickly or aged, their owners instead unconscionably have them killed off and, in most cases, their remains burned.

That was the cruel fate that befell a sixteen-year-old gray cat named Sally from Marblehead, twenty-six kilometers north of Boston, on April 30th after she had suffered a stroke. Although feline seizures are preeminently treatable, her de facto caretakers at the Friends of Marblehead's Abandoned Animals (FMAA) shelter at 44 Village Street and the Marblehead Animal Control Department elected instead to have her killed and her corpse cremated.

As far as it is known, Sally lived her entire life on the grounds of the shelter but instead of providing her with heated accommodations FMAA and Animal Control forced her to hole up in a pile of rocks out back. Considering Massachusetts' long cold and snowy winters, it is nothing short of amazing that she lasted for as long as she did under such inhumane conditions.

Although she apparently was provided with food and water on a daily basis, the shelter did absolutely nothing in order to protect her from the diabolical machinations of motorists on busy Village Street. Even more lamentable, it never attempted to either socialize her or to place her in a loving home. It therefore is safe to say that FMAA's attitude toward her was one of benign neglect.

As disgraceful and uncaring as all of that was, it nevertheless pales in comparison with the shelter and Animal Control 's shameful betrayed of her in her hour of greatest need. In particular, shortly before she suffered the stroke FMAA began to allow her into its basement where she was able to recline on a blanket.

Instead of exploiting her deteriorating health in order to finally do right by her by supplying her with permanent shelter and veterinary care, FMAA and Animal Control did the exact opposite and got rid of her for good. Only those monsters who strut around on two legs with their dirty schnozes poked high in the air are capable of such treachery and moral depravity.

FMAA's betrayal and murder of Sally was made all the more reprehensible by the fact that it likes to pass itself off as a no-kill operation. Whereas no cat ever should be killed under any circumstances, the so-called no-kill movement is not so much of a step in the right direction as it is a grotesque fraud that is rife with more double-talk, ruses, and just plain scams than those ever perpetrated by the protagonist in Herman Melville's 1857 novel, The Confidence Man.

To put the matter rather bluntly, to have any credibility at all no-kill should mean exactly what that connotation implies and nothing less. (See Cat Defender post of July 29, 2010 entitled "Benicia Vallejo Humane Society (now known as the Humane Society of North Bay) Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter.")

Sally's executioners did erect a small memorial in her honor in back of the shelter that consisted of her ashes and food dish as well as a photograph of her but all of that is a rather shabby substitute for the presence of the genuine article herself. (See Cat Defender post of October 23, 2012 entitled "A Supposedly No-Kill Operation in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care.")

A lack of respect for the sanctity of feline life is by no means limited to no-kill impostors, such as FMAA, but it is a malignancy that extends to just about all feline advocacy groups as well. For example, ACA killed off its longtime office cat, Jared, in November.

Later on January 22, 2013, another of its office cats, Jazzy, either was killed off or died on her own. (See Cat Defender post of January 2, 2013 entitled "Alley Cat Allies Demonstrates Its Utter Contempt for the Sanctity of Life by Unconscionably Killing Off Its Office Cat, Jared" and ACA press release of January 23, 2013 entitled "Alley Cat Allies Remembers Office Cat Jazzy.")

As it readily should be apparent, it is extremely difficult to elevate the status of cats when those groups and individuals in the vanguard of the feline protection movement have so little respect for the sanctity of life. Moreover, their dismal conduct and public pronouncements set simply horrendous examples for everyone else to follow.

6.)  Bird Lover in Norfolk Murders Hartley with an Air Rifle.

Hartley

Marthán Niewoudt Bester Killed 3,400 Cats on Marion

Clearly, all of these maniacal cat killers knew well beforehand of the adverse consequences of their crimes. They simply killed the cats in order to establish a rationale for exterminating other animals.

Like the National Audubon Society, their ultimate objective is to systematically liquidate any species that they either simply do not like or are able to obtain the funding to attack. All of their palaver about saving endangered species and the environment is merely a subterfuge for the commission of their horrific crimes. (See Cat Defender post of March 15, 2007 entitled "Connecticut Audubon Society Shows Its True Colors by Calling for the Slaughter of Feral Cats, Mute Swans, Mallards, Canada Geese, and Deer.")

In addition to providing ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and other ailurophobes with unlimited opportunities in order to line their pockets, pad their curricula vitae, slake their thirsts for feline flood, and to celebrate their evil deeds, the selection of remote islands as the venues for their extirpation campaigns allows them to perfect their extermination methodologies far from the prying eyes of the public. Their ultimate goal, however, is to apply the same technologies and lies toward the systematic eradication of cats everywhere.

For example, after years of eliminating cats on Macquarie, Tasman, and other islands, Australia is now posed to kill up to as many as twenty million of them on the mainland. In doing so it not only intends to employ some of the same techniques employed by Bester on Marion, such as the use of the FPV, but it has come up with some of its own that are every bit as sinister. (See The Sydney Morning Herald, July 1, 2014 and November 7, 2014 entitled, respectively, "'Curiosity': The Cat-Killing Bait to Protect Native Species" and "Dying to Be Clean: The New Technique for Controlling Cats.")

Even if these feline extirpation campaigns were run on the level and served some valid conservation causes, which is most definitely not the case, they never would be either just or morally acceptable. First of all, the cats that they are so maliciously maligning and horrifically slaughtering with a vengeance were cruelly uprooted from their native lands and then subjected to long, grueling, and often fatal voyages to distant lands in the holds of cargo ships.

Once they had outlived their usefulness to their imperialist overlords they were cruelly and irresponsibly abandoned without food, water, shelter, and veterinary care. Now that there are megabucks to be made from their elimination, they are being hounded down like convicted felons and hideously killed. To condense a long and sordid story to its essentials, they are the victims and their killers are guilty of worse crimes than those ever perpetrated by the Hitlers and Pol Pots of this world.

If there were so much as an ounce of justice in this wicked old world, Bester and his fellow cat killers would be arrested, tried convicted, and then shot. Although in Bester's case, a bullet in his warped noggin would be far too charitable; instead, he should be administered, in measured increments, a dose of everything that he gave the cats on Marion.

He is such a thoroughly evil son of a bitch that he has absolutely no business being above ground where he poisons the very air that he breathes with every foul breath that he takes. His demise also would put an end to his incessant preening like a peacock and bragging about how many cats that he has killed.

In memoriam:

Jonathan Frid, Television's Barnabas Collins, Dies at Eighty-Seven.

Jonathan Frid and His Cat

Anyone who was lucky enough to have come of age during the rollicking, frolicking 1960's sans doute recalls hurrying home from school each afternoon in order to catch the latest installment in a gothic soap opera entitled Dark Shadows. The star of the show was a two-hundred-year-old vampire named Barnabas Collins who was portrayed to perfection by Jonathan Frid.

Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins

After the show ended in 1971, he returned to the stage and in the early 1990's delivered a series of dramatic readings in Manhattan. For the most part, however, he contented himself in later life by appearing at cast reunions of Dark Shadows and at memorabilia shows.

Little is known about his private life but it is believed that he was a devoted cat lover. Sadly, he died in his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, on April 14th as the result of injuries sustained in a fall. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 20, 2012, "Jonathan Frid, Eighty-Seven, TV Vampire" and the New York Post, April 20, 2012, "Dark Shadows' Star Dead.")



Davy Jones of the Monkees Dies at Sixty-Six.

Davy Jones

The Monkees were the American equivalent of the Beatles back in the 1960's and the band's Davy Jones was a teenage hearttrob. Many of the band's signature tunes, such as "Daydream Believer,""Last Train to Clarksville,""Pleasant Valley Sunday," and "I'm a Believer," can still be heard on radio stations that cater to music from that fabulous era.

Perhaps better known for his love of horses, Jones also kept four cats -- Big Red, Fluffy, Momma, and Liekey -- at his summer residence in the tiny Pennsylvania village of Beavertown, two-hundred-fifty-seven miles northwest of Philadelphia. Although he spent his winters in Florida, he hired his neighbor, Carol Wickard, to look after his cats during his absence.

Two of them lived under heat lamps in his barn while the remaining pair resided in his yellow clapboard house where he spent $4,000 annually on heat alone in order to keep them warm during the wintertime. He died in Stuart on February 29th but, sadly, it is not known what became of his cats. (See The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 9, 2012, "Hey, Hey, Monkee Hideaway.")

Both he and Frid will be sorely missed in that not only is this world a far poorer place without their artistry, personalities, and compassion, but because cats need all of their supporters and admirers alive, healthy and, above all, ready to do battle on their behalves.

Photos: Trip Advisor (Hemingway's House), Alabama State Bar (Dubina), Roberto Rodriguez of the Associated Press (Patches), WHSV-TV of Harrisonburg (Meadows and his damaged town house), Andrew Chatwin (Thomas), the New York Daily News (rabbi with a rooster), Tanay Warerkar of the New York Daily News (chickens outside shul), Care2.com (kittens rescued at Aloe Village), Facebook (Greenberg), Terry Date of the Marblehead Patch (Cruger at Sally's memorial), Daily Mail and Albanpix (Hartley), Matthew Usher of the Dereham Times (Reeves), Daily Mail and Masons (Doyle), Bedfordshire on Sunday (cat trapped by Doyle), BCSPCA (cat frozen in ice), the Wiltshire Times (Tazzy), KIRO-TV of Seattle (Young), Hayne Palmour IV of the North County Times of Escondido (cats rescued from San Nicolas), Institute for Wildlife Studies (Garcelon), University of Pretoria (Bester), Confessions of a Pop Culture Addict (Frid with a cat), ABC-TV (Frid as Barnabas Collins), and the cover from Jones's 1971 eponymous album (Jones).

Lewis and His Shadow Watch over the Plants

"I knew something was wrong today (December 27th) when I walked in and he wasn't lying there."
-- Brian Wolfe

Lewis, the longtime resident feline of Downtown Home and Garden at 210 South Ashley Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, departed this vale of tears on Boxing Day. It is far from clear, however, if he left on his own accord or was deliberately shoved headfirst into the great void.

"Lewis, the orange tabby store cat at Downtown Home and Garden, has died peacefully at about twenty (sic) years of age," seventy-year-old Mark Hodesh, who up until January 1st owned and operated the store, announced in an untitled article posted at 12:53 p.m., December 26th, on the retailer's Facebook page.

The local rag, The Ann Arbor News, likewise demonstrated that it is every bit as adept as Hodesh in obfuscating the truth when it reported on December 27th that Lewis simply had "passed away." (See "Lewis the Cat Mourned at Ann Arbor Downtown Home and Garden.")

The response to his death from those in Ann Arbor who were fortunate enough to have known the eighteen-year-old tom during the fifteen years that he slaved away for peanuts at Hodesh's store was equally callous and uncaring. Although dozens of them took to Facebook in order to proclaim their abiding love for him, none of them questioned the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.

"I knew something was wrong today (December 27th) when I walked in and he wasn't lying there (on the bench across from the cash register)," Brian Wolfe of Superior Charter Township, eighteen kilometers east of Ann Arbor, casually remarked to The Ann Arbor News.

There is nothing in the public record to suggest, however, that he treated Lewis's death as anything other than a mild curiosity. That in itself speaks volumes for just how little most humans value the sanctity of feline life. If either Hodesh or one of his employees had died suddenly Wolfe most definitely would have demanded to know the particulars.

"Lewis has regular visitors," Hodesh proclaimed to The Ann Arbor News on August 1, 2011 after his resident feline went AWOL for a week. (See "Ann Arbor Store Downtown Home and Garden Still Searching for Lewis the Cat.") "He means a lot to a lot of customers."

Evidently that was not the case. Much more disturbingly, the events surrounding Lewis's death lead to the likely, although by no means substantiated, conclusion that he was deliberately killed off by Hodesh and a local veterinarian.

First of all, there is not any evidence to indicate that Lewis recently had been ill; au contraire, the mere fact that he weighed a robust fifteen pounds would tend to suggest just the exact opposite. Moreover, since some cats have been known to live to be at least thirty-five-years-old, Lewis at eighteen was not really all that old.

Secondly, if Lewis had died of natural causes, Hodesh likely would have promptly divulged that information to the public. Thirdly, Hodesh's glaring lack of both surprise and grief tends to indicate that he ordered Lewis's death with all the sans souci that he does takeout from a chop suey joint.

Lewis and Mark Hodesh

Fourthly, Lewis's death on Boxing Day is a dead giveaway in that all-too-many alleged lovers of the species choose that time in order to abandon, dump at shelters, and kill off their faithful companions. Fifthly, even the timeline of events is suspicious.

For example, on its web site Downtown Home and Garden states that it shuttered its doors at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve and did not reopen them again until December 26th. In spite of that, Hodesh posted a Christmas card on the store's Facebook page at 8:18 a.m. on Christmas Day and once again took pen in hand at 6:53 a.m. on Boxing Day in order to announce that every item in the store would be twenty per cent off throughout the remainder of the year.

While it is conceivable that he could have updated his Facebook page from home, that in no way shines any light upon what Lewis was doing between 3 p.m. Christmas Eve and the morning of December 26th when he allegedly died. In particular, was he left all alone during that period?

Hodesh's version of events simply is not plausible because he has not revealed exactly when Lewis died. If he simply had found him dead when he arrived at the store on December 26th it seems that he would have informed the public of that sad occurrence right from the outset.

Sixthly, December 31st was Hodesh's last day as owner and operator of Downtown Home and Garden and that makes it appear that getting rid of Lewis was one of his final acts as ruler of the roost. That analysis of his motivation is somewhat compromised in that he still owns the building and plans on continuing to toil away at the store in some unspecified capacity.

He also intends to continue operating the adjoining Mark's Carts, a summertime outdoor food court, as well as Bill's Beer Garden, which is open for business evenings in the garden shop's parking lot during both the spring and summer. There accordingly was not any obvious reason why he could not have continued to care for Lewis.

The solution to that conundrum in all likelihood lies with the store's new owner, employee Kelly Vore, who may not have wanted Lewis around and that constitutes the seventh reason for questioning Hodesh's version of events. "The cat is a legendary part of this business," she acknowledged to The Ann Arbor News in the December 27th article cited supra. "That is a vacancy I wouldn't even begin to try to fill."

It thus could be argued that if Lewis had died unexpectedly and she truly had cared about him, she would have found an immediate replacement for him. After all, that would have been the best way in order to both honor and to keep his memory alive.

Eightly, Hodesh has not explained what was done with Lewis's remains. Even more outrageously, he did not even provide him with a proper funeral. All of that strongly suggests that his corpse was either burned or tossed out in the trash like yesterday's newspapers.

If there is any validity to that foregoing analysis of events, Hodesh's conduct is not only morally repugnant and revolting, but totally unjustified. "I have plenty of money, I don't need much," he bragged to The Ann Arbor News on October 29th of last year. (See "Downtown Home and Garden Owner Mark Hodesh to Sell Business to Employee.")"I have a Ford Escort, not a BMW."

With that being the case, he did not have even a remotely valid excuse for killing off Lewis. For instance, if had become ill, Hodesh easily could have afforded to pony up for his veterinary treatment no matter how much it cost.

Lewis Relaxes after a Hard Day's Work

That is a far different scenario from those faced every day by impecunious cat owners who are unable to pay the outrageous fees that veterinarians demand in order to treat their ailing cats. There arguably is not any greater benefit to having money than to be able to use it in order to save the lives of sick cats, family members, and valued friends. Money should only be used for doing good, not evil, and that is a lesson that Hodesh, quite obviously, never has taken to heart throughout his many years upon this earth.

Secondly, with his money and contacts within the community, both personal and professional, it would have been a rather easy matter for him to have placed Lewis in either another home or at a sanctuary. He most definitely did not have any right to prematurely snuff out his precious life.

In all likelihood it never will be known how Lewis spent the first two years of his life. All that has come to light so far is that he showed up one day during the spring of 1999 at the residence of Maureen Grady in Scio Township, eight kilometers to the west of Ann Arbor. He remained with her for six months but never was fully accepted by her four cats and trio of canines.

"He was just fierce. He had his own agenda," she claimed to The Ann Arbor News in the December 27th article cited supra."He was very aggressive. I realized that he needed a different home."

Either later that year or in early 2000 she fobbed him off on Hodesh and the rest in history. "It was an immediate fit," he told The Ann Arbor News on December 27th. "He ended up being very friendly to people."

"It was a marriage made in heaven," Peter Heydon of the Mosiac Foundation added. "He had the freedom of a big place."

None of those testimonies should be construed, however, to imply either that things could not have been worked out at Grady's residence if she had possessed the prerequisite savoir-faire or that Lewis would not have made a simply splendid companion for some other individual or family. As things eventually turned out, residing at Downtown Home and Garden was far from the idyllic paradise that Heydon claims.

Most notably, Lewis was forced to spend all of his nights as well as holidays when the store was closed all by his lonesome. Also, as his misadventures in 2011 vividly demonstrated, Hodesh irresponsibly placed his life in jeopardy by allowing him to roam without the accompaniment of a chaperon.

Although it would be unfair to maintain that Hodesh nakedly exploited him, Lewis most assuredly deserved a far better life than the one that he was forced to forge as a garden shop cat. It also is clear that a lion's share of the benefits derived from the arrangement accrued to Hodesh and his store rather than to Lewis.

In particular, there can be little doubt that his presence drew countless new customers to the store and that in turn made Hodesh's cash register sing like a hallelujah choir. "We walked in after looking from the outside and (Lewis) was lying right there on the bench," Wolfe added to The Ann Arbor News in the December 27th article cited supra. "It was always nice seeing the cat there."

As all clever retailers and marketers know only too well, the path that leads to the wallets of adults often wends its way through the eyes and hearts of small children and that certainly was the case with Lewis and Hodesh's clientele. "A million kids learned how to pet a cat on his head," store employee Sarah Kaufmann told The Ann Arbor News on December 27th. "People in their twenties bring in their kids and say 'my mom used to come bring me to see this cat.' He was really amazing."

Lewis Holds Court with His Many Young Admirers

To his credit, that is a fact that Hodesh readily acknowledges. "He enjoyed a brilliant career here over seventeen (sic) years allowing children to maul him with kisses, and gently taught them when enough is enough," he wrote in the December 26th Facebook article cited supra. "He indulged foolish baby talk from some adults while keeping a knowing, dignified relationship with others."

He additionally sans doute kept the store free of rodents and that saved Hodesh a packet in pest control. All of that and much, much more Lewis freely donated to Hodesh and Downtown Home and Garden in exchange for only tuna, kibble, and water. Try as he may, Hodesh never will be able to find another employee willing to work for so long and hard for so very little in return.

In addition to lounging on the bench across from the till, Lewis will be remembered for snoozing near the radiator during the wintertime and for brightening the evenings of patrons at Bill's Beer Garden as he strolled from table to table. The unidentified North Carolinian who stops by the store each year on his drive up to his summer home in Petoskey, four-hundred-five kilometers north of Ann Arbor, also sans doute will be saddened to learn of his demise.

If indeed Hodesh had him killed, Lewis thus has joined the ranks of countless millions of cats before him who have been murdered in cold blood by their owners once their presence was no longer desired. Very few of these helpless victims are known to the world at large but, as the deaths of Lewis and numerous other cats like him have more than amply demonstrated, even worldwide acclaim is not any palliative against the perfidy that lurks like a viper in the diseased souls of most cat owners. (See Cat Defender posts of February 9, 2006, December 7, 2006, October 28, 2008, March 12, 2009, October 23, 2012, July 17, 2013, August 27, 2014, and October 18, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Newspaper Cat Named Tripod Is Killed Off by Journalists He Befriended in Vermont,""After Nineteen Years of Service and Companionship, Ingrates at Iowa Library Murder Dewey Readmore Books,""Love and Admired All Over the World, Feline Heroine Scarlett Is Killed Off by Her Owner after She Becomes Ill,""Too Cheap and Lazy to Care for Him During His Final Days, Betty Currie Has Socks Killed Off and His Corpse Burned,""A Supposedly No-Kill Shelter in Marblehead Betrays Sally and Snuffs Out Her Life Instead of Providing Her with a Home and Veterinary Care,""Not Satisfied with Merely Whacking Meiko, Garrison Keillor Struts on Stage in Order to Shed a Bucketful of Crocodile Tears and to Denigrate the Entire Species,""After Traveling for So Many Miles on the Bridport to Charmouth Bus, Dodger's Last Ride Is, Ironically, to the Vet Who Unconscionably Snuffs Out His Precious Life at the Urging of His Derelict Owner," and "Hamish McHamish's Derelict Owner Reenters His Life after Fourteen Years of Abject Neglect only to Have Him Killed Off after He Contracts a Preeminently Treatable Common Cold.")

Given that there are so many pressing political, legal, and moral issues affecting the lives of cats, it is difficult to single out any particular one that is of paramount importance. Nevertheless, the abolition of the odious practice of killing off elderly and ailing cats has to be near the top of the list.

In fact, it is difficult to understand how that the status of all abused cats, especially those that are homeless and preyed upon by vivisectors, ever can be upgraded so long as the guardians of domesticated ones are permitted to utilize with impunity the misnomered expedient of euthanasia as a convenient excuse in order to absolve themselves of their moral and custodial obligations to their faithful companions. To put the matter rather bluntly, their patently immoral behavior is only one step removed from the horrific crimes perpetuated against the species by ornithologists, wildlife biologists, PETA, and vivisectors.

As far as their accomplices in crime are concerned, absolutely nothing can be said in their favor; on the contrary, the entire god-rotten lot of them not only should be stripped of their licenses to practice veterinary medicine but, like Jack Kevorkian, sent to jail to boot. As things now stand, however, these glorified knackers are not even so much as compelled by law to disclose either their kill rates or the number of impecunious cats that they send to their premature graves each year by categorically refusing to treat them.

It additionally is nothing short of disgraceful that not a single known cat advocacy groups is willing to so much as condemn this simply outrageous and morally repugnant practice. The reason for their deafening silence is, quite obviously, the petit fait that they are every bit as guilty as guardians and veterinarians of not only killing off cats that have been entrusted to their care but even their very own companions as well! (See Cat Defender post of January 2, 2013 entitled "Alley Cat Allies Demonstrates Its Utter Contempt for the Sanctity of Life by Unconscionably Killing Off Its Office Cat, Jared.")

"He met me at the door every morning," Hodesh declared to The Ann Arbor News on December 27th. "There will never be another cat like Lewis."

On that last point he is deadly correct but, malheureusement, there will be countless more men and women who think and behave just like him and therein lies the gist of the problem. Tant pis, in time even the memory of how Lewis lived and died will fade from the collective consciousness of those who knew him.

The killing, abuse, and exploitation of cats like him is thus destined to continue unabated. In that respect he has lived and died in vain because mankind has learned absolutely nothing from all that he gave so freely to this world and that makes his death all the more tragic, heartbreaking and, above all, totally unforgivable.

Photos: Facebook.

A Bedraggled Nicky Has His Paws Wrapped

"I just thought, gosh, there is no way he can make it because he's been inside with us all these years."
-- Candice Darmafall

Nothing good ever lasts.

If something sounds too good to be true, it likely is not so.

Good guys only win in the movies.

And, storybook endings are reserved for the world of fiction.

Like poisonous arrows shot from a quiver in spitfire fashion, the cynics sling their distressing truths at anyone willing to so much as lend them an ear. Moreover, there is precious little solace to be found in even the grudging acknowledgement that their pronouncements do contain a certain degree of validity. That is especially the case after a handsome and loving cat who, at first report had made a miraculous recovery from a simply horrendous case of frostbite and hypothermia, has had a relapse and died.

As painful as it is to even contemplate, let alone chronicle, that is precisely what has happened to a ten-year-old longhaired, orange-colored tom named Nicky from Lorain, Ohio, who died on January 17th as the result of cruelly having been left outside in the freezing cold for an astonishing twenty-one consecutive days and nights! Like countless other felines who succumb to the numbing effects of hypothermia each winter, Nicky's prolonged suffering was entirely preventable and that only serves to make his premature death all the more tragic and inexcusable.

On Thursday, January 15th he was found near death by an unidentified family in Amherst, eight kilometers due south of Lorain, and transported to the Friendship Animal Protection League (FAPL) in Elyria, fifteen kilometers to the west. "It was completely frozen. The cat was basically stiff as a board," Greg Willey of FAPL told WKYC-TV of Cleveland on January 18th. (See "Miracle Cat Found Frozen Has Died.")"The best way for me to describe it is that it looked like it came out a meat locker."

Willey's first instinct was to finish the job that Old Man Winter had started but when Nicky stirred and meowed he had a positive change of heart and instead rushed him to Fox Veterinary Hospital in Carlisle Township, approximately seven kilometers removed from Elyria. "The poor cat came to me completely flat out; we thought he was dead," veterinarian Ashley Berardi told WKYC-TV. "Temperature was low below normal, so low it wouldn't even register on the thermometer."

Like Willey before her, Berardi's first thought was not to even attempt to save Nicky's life but rather to snuff it out. "Greg had thought we were going to have to euthanize. But we kind of showed the cat some food and he perked up right after it, so he still had that drive," Berardi added to WKYC-TV. "So we thought, okay, let's get the catheter in, let's try."

As it should be obvious to any thinking person, the life of any sick or injured cat is worth saving regardless of whether it has an appetite or not. Furthermore, just because a cat is too sick to eat does not necessarily mean that it will not respond to veterinary intervention.

Based upon both Berardi's appalling lack of respect for the sanctity of feline life as well as her indefensible triage protocol, she undoubtedly would have followed Willey's advise and killed off Nicky on the spot if he had not responded to the offer of sustenance. That can only be interpreted to imply that if she were practicing medicine she likely would subject a man with a hole in his head to a test of scarfing down a platter of pork chops before she commenced treatment.

She eventually did, thankfully, get around to administering intravenous fluids and painkillers to Nicky as well as placing him on a heating pad in order to quickly elevate his body temperature. Each of his badly frostbitten paws also were treated and carefully wrapped.

All of that initially proved to be a resounding success in that he was able to shake off death's icy grip and to regain consciousness. "I cannot describe to you how much of a miracle it is that this cat is still ticking," Willey later marveled to The Chronicle-Telegram of Elyria on January 16th. (See "Olaf the Frozen Cat Reunited with Owner.") "It is truly incredible. You could have probably lifted it by its tail and it would have stayed flat."

Once Nicky's miraculous return to the world of the living had been reported by both WKYC-TV and Facebook, his longtime owner Candice Darmafall came forward to reclaim him on January 16th. "I'm so happy," she rejoiced to The Chronicle-Telegram. "He's so beautiful and has always been such a nice cat."

Since the staff at Fox had dubbed him Olaf in honor of the snowman from Walt Disney's 2013 production, Frozen, she even briefly contemplated changing Nicky's name. "We might have to start calling him Nickolaf," she mused to The Chronicle-Telegram.

Her newfound lightheartedness was strikingly at odds with the doom and gloom that she expressed when she was first reunited with him and he was still tethered to intravenous tubes. "I just thought, gosh, there is no way he can make it because he's been inside with us all these years," she told WKYC-TV.

As things tragically turned out, her original dire assessment of his slim chances of pulling through proved to be prophetic in that by Saturday Nicky was dead. "They (Darmafall and her family) got a chance to spend a lot of time on Saturday with Nicky and say their goodbyes, and that was a pretty important thing," was all that Willey was willing to disclose to The Chronicle-Telegram on January 19th. (See "Cat Nicknamed Olaf Dies from the Cold.")

Darmafall likewise was equally reticent about what actually had happened to Nicky. "Social media and caring people are what gave us the opportunity to reunite with him," she declared to The Chronicle-Telegram on January 19th. "We can't thank the family who found him, FAPL, and Fox Veterinary Hospital enough."

It therefore is not known what caused Nicky's abrupt relapse and death although Berardi earlier had warned that he could have sustained unspecified internal injuries as the result of his prolonged exposure to the elements. All that has been reported in the media is that by January 16th his body temperature had returned to normal and that he was up and about. It is not unusual, however, for ailing cats to raise the hopes of their loving guardians by mounting surprising, last-ditch rallies only to later break their hearts to bits by suddenly dying.

Nicky Lies Suspended Between Life and Death

Much more importantly, it is not even known if he was allowed to die on his own terms or was intentionally killed off by Berardi at Darmafall's urging. After all, Berardi certainly does not have any qualms whatsoever about killing cats so long as she is handsomely paid for her diabolical crimes.

It is even remotely conceivable that Nicky could have been whacked by Willey of FAPL in that it was he who announced his death. His outrageous tendency to repeatedly refer to Nicky as it also tends to suggest that he looks down upon cats as inanimate objects.

Furthermore, honesty is far from being FAPL's strong suit. For example, although it claims to be a no-kill operation, in practice it kills off all cats and other animals that enter its portals with the notable exception of those that it is able to sell back to the public for a profit.

On its web site it not only admits to killing animals that are terminally ill and deemed to be dangerous, but it also reserves the right to kill off its inmates in so-called emergencies as well as to comply with unspecified federal, state, and local laws. Most revealing of all, it declares that it will not allow animals to live for prolonged periods of time in cages and that can only be interpreted to mean that FAPL is operating a slaughterhouse thinly disguised as a no-kill operation.

Far from being an isolated case, that is how another no-kill fraud known as Kitty City in La Lutz, New Mexico, operates. Plus, it additionally has the audacity to support bans on the feeding of homeless cats as well as to stipulate that the ones it sells back to the public be cruelly confined indoors for the remainder of their lives. (See Cat Defender post of July 29, 2010 entitled "Benicia Vallejo Humane Society Is Outsourcing the Mass Killing of Kittens and Cats All the While Masquerading as a No-Kill Shelter.")

In addition to not knowing where and how Nicky died, it has not even been publicly disclosed what was done with his remains and, as per usual, it is precisely the capitalist media who are to blame for those glaring omissions in the public record. When it comes to their coverage of cats, they oscillate between cute stories that are designed to sell newspapers and to attract viewers and the outrageous lies spread by ornithologists, wildlife biologists, PETA, and others. Such a dishonest policy therefore allows them to laugh all the way to the bank without ever being compelled to recognize that cats are sentient beings endowed with both rights and liberties that should be respected.

As suspicious, horrible, and heartbreaking as Nicky's death was, that is only one part of the story. The other part is that he had been living on the streets ever since Boxing Day! Although the weather was mild enough on that ill-fated day in that temperatures ranged from 31°to 48° Fahrenheit, conditions soon deteriorated. According to data recorded by the Lorain County Regional Airport in nearby New Russia Township and posted online at www.friendlyforecast.com, the thermometer was below freezing on twenty of the days and nights that he was forced to spend outdoors. Included in that total there were four days of single digit readings plus another four days of sub-zero temperatures.

It also snowed on twelve of those days and the rain came down on four other occasions. So, in addition to being nearly frozen to death, Nicky also was soaked to the bone.

In the end it undoubtedly was the sub-zero temperatures that killed him. Although he did somehow manage to survive a -4° Fahrenheit reading on January 8th and a -2° Fahrenheit night on January 10th, he was unable to make it through the night on January 14th when the thermometer plunged to -12° Fahrenheit. Even on the day that he finally was rescued the thermometer stood at a teeth chattering  -3° Fahrenheit.

It thus appears in hindsight that Nicky likely would still be alive today if his deliverance had come a day earlier. Sadly, neither The Fates nor lady luck were willing to accommodate him even in the end and despite the fact that he had suffered so painfully for so very long.

Compounding an already totally unmanageable stroke of simply horrendous misfortune, Nicky not only had lived his entire existence indoors but he had been cruelly declawed and neutered as well. "Nicky has been with us ten years and has never been outside," Darmafall disclosed to The Chronicle-Telegram in the January 16th article cited supra.

He accordingly knew absolutely nothing about the outside world and without claws he was unable to procure sustenance, defend himself against predators, and to climb trees and fences in order to elude pursuers. His weight at the time of his rescue has not been disclosed but it is difficult to imagine that he could have been anything other than severely emaciated.

It therefore is truly amazing that he lasted for as long as he did under such unrelenting, hellish circumstances. Needless to say, no cat ever should be subjected to the pain, suffering, deprivations, and fears that were visited upon Nicky.

His plight also serves as a poignant reminder of the adverse consequences of denaturing cats. First of all, besides being outrageously cruel, painful, and utterly barbaric, declawing amounts to a death sentence for cats that, one way or the other, find themselves outdoors and on their own for extended periods of time. (See Cat Defender post of November 29, 2010 entitled "Harrison's Turbulent Years Spent on the Street Are Yet Another Reason Why Declawing Is Not Only Cruel and Inhumane but Dangerous as Well.")

Secondly, confining cats indoors exclusively is not only cruel and inhumane but it deprives them of both the knowledge and skills that they need in order to survive should they unexpectedly find themselves outdoors. Most domesticated cats live for quite a few years and absolutely no one can foresee what the future will hold for either them or their guardians.

For instance, some of them have been known to escape from their carriers while en route to the veterinarian with disastrous results. (See Cat Defender post of March 7, 2008 entitled "Georgia Is Found Safe and Sound After Spending a Harrowing Twenty-Five Days Lost in the Bowels of the New York City Subway System.")

Individuals also not only die but cruelly abandon their cats. It therefore is imperative that they be acquainted with the outside world and know how to survive in it. No halfway responsible parent ever would lock up a child in a closet and keep it in total ignorance of the outside world and the same logic applies in spades to the nurturing of cats.

Nicky Is Briefly Reunited with  Candice Darmafall

Thirdly,  many kittens are weaned way too early. Without human intervention it is not uncommon for their mothers to continue to nurse and instruct them for as long as six to twelve months after birth.

Fourthly, PETA ridiculously wants to denature the species by transforming these obligate carnivores into vegetarians. Many owners do not help matters by feeding them a steady diet of cheap kibble instead of the meat that they crave.

Fifthly, although necessary in many instances, en masse sterilizations are robbing them of their sexual freedom. Sixthly and most outrageous of all, their guardians and unprincipled veterinarians are depriving them of their right to die natural deaths.

Man always has been the great manipulator and annihilator of the animals, Mother Earth, and even his fellow man but that does not make such abhorrent conduct either right or desirable, especially where the animals and Mother Earth are concerned. If modern man has sunk so low that he no longer has any ambition other than to be a dumb herd animal who works most of the time and devotes his ever diminishing leisure to counting his shekels and lapping up whatever garbage du jour that mass culture has to offer, that is his business but he should have enough decency not to impose his baseness upon cats and other animals.

"To live is so startling that it leaves little time for anything else," Emily Dickinson once observed and that is not a bad philosophy to follow. It will not make an individual either rich or popular but it will deter either him or her from abusing the animals and Mother Earth.

The circumstances that led to Nicky's abandonment are cloaked in every bit as much secrecy as his death and on that vitally important issue Darmafall has been anything but forthcoming. "I don't know how he got out, but we were so happy to find him," she vowed to The Chronicle-Telegram on January 16th.

On that latter point she appears to have been sincere. "She was just sobbing when she saw her cat," is how Willey described her reunion with Nicky at Fox to The Chronicle-Telegram on January 16th. "This was just a wonderful turn of events."

Notwithstanding that, it is nevertheless highly suspicious that Nicky disappeared on Boxing Day in that so many nominal Christians select that time of the year in order to get rid of their unwanted cats. (See Cat Defender post of January 15, 2015 entitled "Lewis, Ann Arbor's Much Celebrated Garden Shop Cat, Departs This World Under Highly Suspicious Circumstances.")

It additionally is odd that Nicky was found eight kilometers away in Amherst. Although it is remotely possible that he could have walked that distance over the course of a number of days, that seems unlikely given the inclement weather.

Besides, since he had spent his entire life indoors it only seems logical that he would have been frightened to death of the world outdoors and as a consequence would not have strayed far from home. That in turn opens up the possibility that he became trapped inside either a box or some article of furniture and thus unwittingly ended up in Amherst.

It is not a pleasant scenario to contemplate and there most assuredly is not a shred of evidence to support it, but it is conceivable that Nicky was driven to Amherst by Darmafall and turned loose in the cold to fend for himself. She is, after all, already guilty of robbing him of both his freedom and claws and this world is chock-full of all sorts of seemingly honest and respectable individuals who nevertheless do terrible things to cats. Plus, her total lack of candor concerning his disappearance only serves to fuel such speculation, no matter how unfounded it may be.

Her credibility is further undermined by the fact that it is unclear just how hard and thoroughly she and her family searched for Nicky. According to The Chronicle-Telegram's January 16th edition, she limited her rescue efforts to posting messages and photographs of him on Facebook.

If that is true, she belongs in jail! That is all the more the case given his handicaps and the inclement weather.

She was fully cognizant from the outset that he was ill-equipped to survive for very long under such dire conditions and her failure to mount an all-out rescue effort can only be described as inexcusable. In particular, all the while he was suffering piteously and dying by degrees in the unforgiving cold she appears to have contented herself with pecking away on her computer from inside the comfort of her heated house!

In that light it would be interesting to know how she spent New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Specifically, was she in her cups, making merry, and watching the football games on the idiot box or out combing the streets and fields for Nicky?

None of that is meant to imply that locating an errant cat is an easy job; au contraire, it is a frustrating, heartbreaking, and near impossible feat to pull off even under the best of circumstances in that it is estimated that fewer that ten per cent of them ever are reunited with their owners. Be that as it may, that is not a valid excuse for not dropping everything and searching high and low, both night and day, for them.

The Amazing Annie

Instead of merely writing off Nicky as dead, she should have logged off of her computer, forsaken her warm and cozy house, and scoured her neighborhood for him. His health and well-being was, after all, her personal and moral responsibility and not that of the users of Facebook.

"Lost Cat" posters should have been printed and nailed to every lamppost and rescue groups, such as FAPL, promptly contacted. Most important of all, she should have trekked door-to-door interviewing residents and leaving "Lost Cat" posters with them.

Only she knows what happened on Boxing Day and how hard she tried to find Nicky. Above all, it is she who is going to have to live with the decisions that she made and that is destined to create a dilemma if she does in fact have a conscience.

It additionally does not reflect positively upon area residents and public officials in that at least some of them surely must have seen Nicky wandering the streets under life-threatening conditions and yet none of them had so much as the common decency to notify the authorities of his desperate plight. Even more deplorable, such callous indifference to the acute suffering of an animal is totally in keeping with Ohioans' well-earned reputation as being some of the most flagrant abusers of cats, both small and large, in the country. (See Cat Defender posts of October 20, 2005, February 26, 2007, August 2, 2007, April 8, 2008, September 22, 2011, and November 3, 2011 entitled, respectively, "After Ridding the Ohio Statehouse of Rats, Cats Now Find Themselves Facing Eviction,""Charged with Feeding a Feral Cat Named Fluffy, Retired Ohio English Teacher Beats the Rap,""Ohio Cat Shot in the Leg with an Arrow Is Forced to Endure a Long-Drawn-Out and Excruciating Death,""Ohio Politician Proposes Adding Cats to the Growing List of Pigs, Other Animals, and Humans Killed by Tasers,""Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Cold-Blooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop," and "Sheriff Matt Lutz Settles an Old Score by Staging a Great Safari Hunt That Claims the Lives of Eighteen Tigers and Seventeen Lions in Zanesville.")

So, in Nicky's case the cynics were proven to be correct in that his remarkable turnaround ultimately proved to be just too good to last. They are not always right, however, in that other cats felled by Old Man Winter's ruthlessness have gotten off of their death beds in order to live again.

For instance, back on January 2, 2010 an unidentified Good Samaritan found a thirteen-year-old tuxedo named Annie emaciated and apparently frozen to death in a snowdrift near Main Street and Sweetland Farm in the Boston suburb of Norfolk. The unidentified rescuer then wrapped her in a blanket and contacted Animal Control Officer Hilary Cohen.

"At first response, she appeared dead. She was cold, stiff, and unresponsive," she said at that time. "When I picked her up, I did hear an agonal cry, but that sometimes happens postmortem."

Despite having grave reservations about her chances of surviving, Cohen refused to give up on Annie. "I kept her in the blanket and put her on my lap in the cruiser and headed to the hospital," she later recalled. "Once in the car, I turned the heater on and saw a whisker twitch. That was the only sign of reflex I saw from her."

At Acorn Animal Hospital in nearby Franklin, Annie was diagnosed to have a body temperature of only 86° Fahrenheit, which is fifteen degrees below normal for a cat. She also nearly had starved to death in that she weighed only three and one-half pounds at the time of her rescue.

The hospital's staff used electric blankets, hair dryers, hot water bottles, and heat disks in a desperate effort to elevate her body temperature. They also administered intravenous fluids and steroids, conducted a blood test, and closely monitored her blood-sugar levels and heart rate.

Seven hours later Annie regained consciousness and within forty-eight hours she was eating, drinking, and back on her feet. "I've seen different kinds of animal issues over the years but I've never seen an animal this cold be revived," Cohen later marveled.

Instead of depositing Annie at a shelter, Cohen went beyond the call of duty when she elected to take her home to her house so that she could continue administering heat therapy to her. On January 5th, her owners came forward to reclaim her after reading about her plight in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro.

As it later was disclosed, Annie's family had been living in Norfolk for only about a week before she mysteriously disappeared in early December of  2009. She was found only about three quarters of a mile from home but even to have made it that far she had been forced to cross railroad tracks and other obstacles. Although her owners had contacted Animal Control and put up "Lost Cat" posters, they quite obviously had not been looking in the right places. (See Cat Defender post of January 21, 2010 entitled "Trapped Outdoors in a Snowstorm, Annie Is Brought Back from the Dead by the Compassion of a Good Samaritan and an Animal Control Officer.")

As Annie's remarkable turnaround clearly demonstrates, time and knowledge are of the essence when dealing with cats suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. Cohen and Acorn's crackerjack veterinary team knew exactly what to do and they did not waste valuable time bandying about Annie and debating the merits of attempting to save her life as FAPL and Fox did in the case of Nicky.

It thus is safe to conclude that the cynics do not hold an absolute monopoly on truth because:

One never knows until one tries.

Miracles do happen and dreams do come true once in a blue moon.

Aegroto dum anima est, spes est.

And, never give up, especially on a cat.

None of that in any way can now either help Nicky or erase the haunting memory of what his last three weeks on this earth must have been like. Only a profound change in how individuals, especially guardians, look upon and treat cats can ever ensure that no cat is again put through what he was forced to endure. Sadly, even that seems to be every bit as far away as the shelter and warmth that he so desperately sought as he trudged day after day, lonely, frightened, and hungry, through the unrelenting Ohio cold and snow.

Photos: Friendship Animal Protection League (Nicky being attended to and with Darmafall), Dan Bowman of WKYC-TV (Nicky by himself on a table), and The Chronicle Sun (Annie).

Flick

"This cat has been outside with a collar for quite a while. Maybe the family packed up and moved."
-- Redford Animal Control Officer Dan Brown

As the bitterly cold winter of 2014-2015 rages on across the northern half of the United States and throughout most of Canada, the number of kittens and cats victimized by its ruthlessness continues to mount with each passing day. On January 14th, for example, a less than one-year-old black kitten subsequently dubbed Flick was found with his front paws frozen to a porch in Redford, Michigan, twenty-six kilometers west of Detroit.

"There was a pool of blood right next to his front paws," Animal Control Officer Dan Brown, who was contacted by an unidentified homeowner who resides at the intersection of Curtis Street and Five Points, related to WDIV-TV of Detroit on January 15th. (See "Cat Frozen to Porch of Redford Home Rescued.")  "It looked like it was coagulated, so he's been there for a while."

Given that an unidentified neighbor had overheard a cat meowing throughout the long, frigid night when the thermometer plummeted to -3° Fahrenheit at the nearest reporting station in Farmington, the homeowner surely also must have heard Flick's plaintive cries as well but for some unexplained reason elected to wait until the following morning before summoning help. That totally inexcusable delay, if indeed the owner was at home, not only ended up exacting an horrific toll on Flick but it nearly cost him his life as well.

Fortunately for him, lady luck was on his side in that Brown knew exactly what to do and he wasted no time in hustling on over to the neighbor's house where he borrowed a pail of room temperature water in order to free Flick's front paws. "Hot water would have only made it worse," he later pointed out to WTSP-TV of Tampa on January 15th. (See "Cat Rescued after Found Frozen to Home's Porch.")

Oddly enough, Flick's rear legs were not frozen to the porch and for that Brown believes that he has a weak bladder to thank. While that certainly is conceivable, it is not the only possible explanation.

For instance, whereas WDIV-TV insists that Flick ripped out his front claws while attempting to extricate himself from his would-be tomb, WTSP-TV claims on the other hand that they had been previously removed. That very well could be the case in that it seems only logical that it would be considerably easier for declawed paws to become frozen to an extremely cold surface than those that had been left intact.

The type and condition of the porch has not been disclosed but based upon the horrific injuries inflicted upon Flick, it not only was frigid but likely covered in ice and possibly snow as well. Regardless of its condition, the injuries sustained by Flick are yet still another cogent argument against the thoroughly barbaric practice of declawing cats.

After delicately extricating him, Brown took Flick to Tail Wagger's 1990 in Livonia, seven kilometers to the west of Redford, where the full extent of his massive injuries first became known. Specifically, his claws were not only missing but he additionally had ripped out the pads on his front paws.

Flick Is on the Mend but He May Be Crippled

Although press reports have not specified the type of treatment that he received at Tail Wagger's, his paws most assuredly were cleaned, medicated, and bandaged. He also likely was given painkillers, heat therapy, and possibly intravenous fluids.

Almost as bad, it initially was reported that he had broken every single digit in both of his front feet during his desperate struggle to extricate himself from the frozen death trap. All of that in turn had left him in simply horrific pain and with swollen paws.

Tail Wagger's did not, however, plan on treating the broken bones in his feet. "There probably will not be a lot of treatment for the break (sic), much like a human, you'd have to let it heal on its own," the charity's Laura Zain told WDIV-TV.

In an untitled article posted January 20th on its Facebook page, Tail Wagger's reversed itself and declared that Flick had not sustained any broken bones and that he was able to support himself on both paws. Later on February 10th the charity disclosed that a portion of one of his paws had been surgically removed but that it would not be known for another week or so if he will be able to walk.

Described by the staff at Tail Wagger's as a "sweet boy with spirit," Flick is scheduled to be put up for adoption as soon as his paws heal. Hopefully, he will not end up as a cripple but even if he is forced to walk with a limp there cannot be any denying that he is truly fortunate to still be alive.

"If it wasn't for the phone call from the homeowner and the assistance from the neighbor, he would've surely froze (sic) to death," Brown told WTSP-TV.

Although this world favors those cats and humans with unfettered access to money, family, and friends, Old Man Winter does not play favorites. He is in that sense the great leveler in that he will unconscionably freeze the life out of any creature that, either unwittingly or through misfortune, tumbles into his merciless grasp.

That, by the way, is the reason why some individuals occasionally are able to screw up smidgens of compassion for homeless men during the wintertime while turning deaf ears to their desperate plight during the remainder of the year. In that regard it is just too bad that there are not other mechanisms in addition to the elements that would allow them to experience firsthand the deprivations that cats and the poor face every day.

Frozen Kitten

Flick's misfortune is all the more deplorable in that it seems highly probable that he was intentionally abandoned by his previous owner. For instance although he had not been neutered, he was wearing both identification and flea collars.

"This cat has been outside with a collar for quite a while," Brown affirmed to WDIV-TV in the article cited supra. "Maybe the family packed up and moved."

Compounding an already desperate state of affairs, Flick's collar was wound so tightly around his neck that it was nearly strangling the life out of him. Although his previous guardian apparently had taken great care to remove his name tag so that he could not be traced back to either him or her, that person irresponsibly left his collar in place so that it could eventually either throttle him or snag on a foreign object.

Even though the dangers associated with both conventional and elastic collars are well-documented, it is almost superfluous to point out that any cretin who would condemn a cat to tough it out in the unforgiving cold and snow is not likely to be overly concerned about him being strangled to death. (See Cat Defender posts of May 28, 2008 and June 22, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Collars Turn into Death Traps for Trooper and Que but both Are Rescued at the Eleventh Hour" and "Hobson Is forced to Wander Around Yorkshire for Months Trapped in an Elastic Collar That Steadily Was Eating Away at His Shoulder and Leg.")

According to google's Street View, the Curtis Street and Five Points section of Redford appears to be the very epitome of a middle-class residential neighborhood with its white wood frame houses, tree-lined streets, and neatly-trimmed green lawns in the summertime. While it always is conceivable that Flick was driven into the area and dumped, the preponderance of the available evidence tends to suggest that his guardian resided not too far away from where he was found.

Redford also has the dubious distinction of being the birthplace of disgraced rocker Theodore Anthony Nugent who not only hates cats with a passion but admittedly shoots every one of them that he sees on sight. Even more outrageously, he is allowed to commit his dastardly deeds with impunity at the canned hunting farm that he operates in Jackson, one-hundred-one kilometers to the west of Redford, because no animal rights group in Michigan is willing to so much as even investigate him let alone put him in jail. (See The Washington Times, December 3, 2010, "Nugent: The Time for Kitty Killing Has Come.")

Since the overwhelming majority of all cases of animal cruelty go unreported by the press, that in turn makes passing judgment on a particular geographical area a rather dicey proposition. For example, some areas actually could be far more antagonistic toward cats than Michigan but their crimes are kept hidden from the outside world by an obliging media.

Nonetheless, there is not any getting around the inescapable conclusion that the catalog of crimes committed against the species by residents of the Wolverine State is indeed long and varied. Heading that list is, as one would expect, the failed city of Detroit where designer cats are shot down and killed in the street while others are poisoned. (See Cat Defender posts of April 19, 2014 and May 2, 2013 entitled, respectively, "Doomed from Conception to a Lifetime of Naked Exploitation and Destined to Never Fit in Anywhere, Chum Is Gunned Down in Cold Blood on the Violent Streets of Lawless and Uncaring Detroit" and "Poisoned Within an Inch of His Life While Living on the Mean Streets of Detroit, Chairman Waffles Survives Three Surgeries in Order to Live Again.")

Rosalie

Not only is the city itself bankrupt, but hundreds of homeowners are so cheap that they prefer to live in unsanitary conditions rather than to pay their monthly water bills. In such a depraved milieu, it is not any surprise that cats are abused with impunity.

Even in parts of the state that are still functioning more or less as normal neither education nor the lack thereof serves as any deterrent to Michiganders' lust for feline blood. (See Cat Defender posts of September 11, 2006, August 20, 2009, and November 24, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Selfish and Brutal Eggheads at Central Michigan University Target a Colony of Feral Cats for Defamation and Eradication,""Combine Operator Severs Howard's Front Paws and Leaves Him in a Ditch to Die but He Is Saved at the Last Minute by a Pair of Compassionate Lads," and "Howard the Combine Kitty Is Adopted by the Lads Who Saved Him from a Sure and Certain Death in a Ditch Alongside a Michigan Wheat Field.")

Shelters throughout the state not only liquidate cats and kittens that have homes waiting for them but they additionally do the dirty work of ailurophobic gardeners. (See Cat Defender posts of June 15, 2010 and August 19, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Bay City Shelter Murders a Six-Week-Old Kitten with a Common Cold Despite Several Individuals Having Offered to Give It a Permanent Home" and "Music Lessons and Buggsey Are Murdered by a Cat-Hating Gardener and an Extermination Factory Posing as an Animal Shelter in Saginaw.")

Like everywhere else in this world, individuals and businesses in Michigan exploit cats to the hilt and then whack them once they have outlived their usefulness to them. (See Cat Defender post of January 15, 2015 entitled "Lewis, Ann Arbor's Much Celebrated Garden Shop Cat, Departs This World Under Highly Suspicious Circumstances.")

That certainly is not the entire story in that Michigan also is home to a handful of individuals who not only care dearly about cats but are willing to go out of their way in order to rescue those in distress. (See Cat Defender post of October 16, 2007 entitled "Tourists from Michigan Save the Life of a Critically Ill Oregon Cat Named Marmalade.")

Redford, and presumably the remainder of Michigan as well, also is guilty of discriminating against cats in that although it is illegal in the city to leave a dog outside in the cold without the benefit of shelter, cats do not enjoy any comparable legal protections against the elements. "It is not illegal for a cat to be outside," Brown told WTSP-TV. "It's frowned upon."

Standing idly by and frowning while untold numbers of cats are suffering and dying in the cold is, quite obviously, not nearly good enough. Au contraire, Redford instead should follow the example set last year by the Philadelphia City Council when it entertained the notion of making it illegal to leave both cats and dogs outside when the thermometer either plummets below freezing or soars above 85° Fahrenheit. (See the Philadelphia Daily News' print edition, April 9, 2014, "Leaving Kitty Out Back All Year Could Cost You.")

While it is readily acknowledged that since neither humane groups nor the police do very much in order to enforce the existing animal cruelty statutes, they certainly are not about to break so much as a sweat safeguarding cats from the cold. Nevertheless, just having such a statute on the books coupled with an occasional arrest and prosecution might serve as a mild deterrent in some instances. Affording cats the same legal protections that dogs now enjoy also would go a long way toward eliminating the widely held view that their lives are somehow less worthy of protection.

Blizzard

While it is difficult offhand to think of either a season of the year or a particular set of circumstances that would justify the heartless abandonment of a cat, doing so during cold and snowy weather is an especially egregious offense. That is doubly so because if they are not done in by the elements they are likely to starve to death in that there is precious little outside for them to eat at such times.

That is especially the case with both exclusively indoor cats and kittens who do not have any firsthand experience at either surviving on their own or in the elements. (See Cat Defender post of February 2, 2015 entitled "Cruelly Denatured and Locked Up Indoors for All of His Adult Life, Nicky Is Suddenly Thrust into the Bitter Cold and Snow for Twenty-One Consecutive Days with Predictably Tragic Results.")

Perennially homeless cats, on the other hand, are experienced enough to at least seek shelter underneath buildings, in recesses in the ground and, sometimes imprudently, underneath the hoods of automobiles. Even then their wiles often are not nearly sufficient in order to save them from sub-zero readings.

Even those fortunate few that somehow manage to survive end up, like Flick, scarred and maimed for the remainder of their lives by the cold. Regardless of how close to death they may be when first rescued, that is not a valid excuse under any circumstances for rescuers and veterinarians not doing all within their power in order to save their lives.

For example, an elderly cat named Annie from Norfolk, Massachusetts, was brought back from death's doorstep in January of 2010 after she came within a hairbreadth of freezing to death in a snowstorm. (See Cat Defender post of January 21, 2010 entitled "Trapped Outdoors in a Snowstorm, Annie Is Brought Back from the Dead by the Compassion of a Good Samaritan and an Animal Control Officer.")

Later on January 26, 2014, a near death brown male kitten subsequently dubbed Frozen Kitten was dropped off at the Animal Care and Control Team in Philadelphia. Although utterly reprehensible and totally unforgivable, the first thought that percolated through the minds of the organization's top honchos was to finish him off on the spot.

Mercifully, volunteers Marta Skuza and Lori DiFiglia intervened with syringes filled with warm fluids, water bottles and heating pads in order to elevate his body temperature, and chest rubs in order to stimulate his circulation. Skuza even took Frozen Kitten home with her to her abode near King of Prussia.

Seven hours later, Frozen Kitten's body temperature had climbed to 97.2° Fahrenheit but he was far from being out of the woods. "We were very nervous and sad," Skuza related to the Burlington County Times of Willingboro, New Jersey, on January 28, 2014. (See "Volunteers Rescue a Cold Kitty.")"Frozen Kitten was getting better almost immediately but the progress was very slow and we were not sure if he is better or if he is going into shock, so we really didn't know that he will be just fine till about midnight when he reached his normal temperature and ate."

Frosty and His Frostbitten Ears and Nose

A few hours after that he was almost back to his old self. "Then I woke up at 3 a.m. to check on him and he moved off the heating pad, was stretched out and comfortably sleeping," she added "When he saw me he hissed and moved away from me. Obviously he got his personality of a scared kitten back and at that point it was definite that he was all better."

Frozen Kitten later was moved to the Pet Adoption and Lifecare Society in Broomall, Delaware County. "He is apparently very chatty now, eats like there is no tomorrow and doing great," Skuza confided to the Burlington County Times. "No more hissing. He is quite content now with the good life off the streets."

Whereas it was not disclosed if Frozen Kitten had suffered either frostbite or internal injuries, an eighteen-month-old gray, brown, and yellow female with beautiful green eyes named Rosalie was not nearly so lucky. Found frozen to the ground sometime during the second week of January in 2014 on Merritt Island in Welland, Ontario, she ended up losing her right ear, part of her left ear, and the tip of her tail to frostbite.

Thanks to the prompt and competent care that she received from the Welland and District Humane Society and the Grand River Veterinary Hospital in Caledonia, she survived in order to live another day. As an added bonus, she later was adopted by her rescuer, Jamie Kmety. (See the St. Catherines Standard, January 17, 2014, "Frostbitten Cat Undergoes Surgery.")

On February 1, 2011, Natasha Schroeder was driving down Pawnee Street in Cleveland, Oklahoma, when she just happened to spy a two-month-old white kitten with black spots named Blizzard meowing piteously in eight inches of snow. His paws were cracked and bleeding, one of his rear legs was injured, and he was suffering from both hypothermia and starvation.

"It was shaking uncontrollably," she later told KJRH-TV of Tulsa on February 2, 20ll. (See "Woman Finds Kitten Freezing in the Snow after Being Dumped in Cleveland, Oklahoma.")"He could barely hold his head up."

Without so much as a moment to spare, Schroeder wrapped Blizzard in a blanket and rushed him to Pound Pals for emergency treatment. He recovered and subsequently was adopted by an unidentified member of the United States Marine Corps from San Angelo, Texas. (See KJRH-TV, February 28, 2011, "Kitten Found During Blizzard in Cleveland, Oklahoma, Has a New Home.")

As terrible as wintertime abandonments in the snowbelt are in themselves, they often are worsened by intentional acts of outrageous animal cruelty. For example, in late December of 2005, most likely on Boxing Day, a calico cat named Lucky was locked up inside a cage that was weighted down with a sixteen-pound stone and tossed into the Clark Ford River in Missoula, Montana.

Roo and Melissa Smith of the York SPCA

Thankfully, The Fates were looking after her on that dreadful occasion in that not only did her cage land on the ice but it was spotted by a passerby who notified the Missoula Fire Department which in turn mounted a rescue just in the nick of time. Later, she was adopted by one of her saviors, firefighter Josh Macrow. (See Cat Defender post of January 13, 2006 entitled "Montana Firefighters Rescue 'Lucky' Calico Cat Who Was Caged and Purposefully Thrown into an Icy River.")

History repeated itself during the yuletide season of 2010 when a black and white kitten named Chabot-Matrix was dumped in the Pennesseewassee Stream in Norway, Maine. Like Lucky before her, Chabot-Matrix landed on an ice floe and subsequently was rescued unharmed on December 30th by members of the Chabot Construction Company from Greene.

She later was adopted by local beautician Chris Ryan. (See Cat Defender post of March 25, 2011 entitled "Compassionate Construction Workers Interrupt Their Busy Day in Order to Rescue Chabot-Matrix from a Stream in Maine.")

Slightly before the attempt was made upon Chabot-Matrix's life, a handsome gray cat named Jack-in-the-Box was sealed up in a cardboard box on December 23, 2010 and left at the curb in frigid Troy, New York. The game plan called for him to either freeze to death during the overnight period or to be collected by the garbageman the next morning. Fortunately for him, he was found by Melissa Lombardo who promptly notified the Troy Police.

Although he was treated for exposure, Jack recovered and was scheduled to have gone to a new home in January of 2011. The man who had abandoned him, forty-eight-year-old Michael T. Walsh, was arrested on December 30th and charged with three counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty. (See WXAA-TV of Albany, December 23, 2010, "Abandoned Cat Found 'Miracle on One-Hundred-Tenth Street'" and Cat Defender post of October 14, 2011 entitled "Chucked Out in the Trash, Tabitha Winds Up in a Oxygen Chamber with Four Broken Ribs, an Injured Lung, and Pneumonia.")

The frigid temperatures unleashed by Mother Nature are not the only source of cold that cats have to fear in that the artificial, man-made variety can be every bit as deadly. For example, in one of the most outrageous cases of animal neglect and cruelty on record, the management and staff at an unidentified frozen food warehouse located somewhere in either Northamptonshire or the East Midlands knowingly allowed a one-year-old tuxedo named Frosty to spend five weeks in their -28° Fahrenheit facility during January and February of 2010.

It is theorized that Frosty was able to persevere in such an extremely cold environment because the doors to the warehouse were open on certain days in order to facilitate the receipt and dispatching of deliveries and that in turn allowed in a degree of warmth. He also likely was able to have secured sanctuary in either a corner or inside some object where it was not quite as cold. As far as sustenance is concerned, he is believed to have avoided starvation and dehydration by eating frozen peas and licking the condensation off the outsides of packages.

Even so, frostbite cost him both of his ears as well as his tail. Although it is not known with any certainty, it nevertheless is believed that he became trapped inside the frozen death chamber after having arrived as an unwitting stowaway on one of the delivery trucks.

Jean

He also could have been intentionally dumped there by one of the drivers but no matter how that he arrived the neglect shown him by the callous capitalists can only be labeled as criminal. (See Cat Defender post of April 8, 2010 entitled "Frozen Food Purveyor Knowingly Condemns Frosty to Spend Five Weeks in Its -28° Fahrenheit Warehouse Without Either Food or Water.")

In November of 2008, an unknown and still at large monster in Chatham-Kent, Ontario, even went so far as to divest a twelve-week-old orange kitten named Chopper of his fur and then to abandon him, still bleeding from multiple cuts that resulted from a mean job of shaving, to the elements. Fortunately, his plight was discovered by a Good Samaritan who brought him to the attention of the Ontario SPCA (OSPCA).

In addition to the cuts, he had contracted a common cold, fleas, worms, and ear mites. He also was so emaciated that his bones were visible through his skin.

"He was in rough shape...we didn't know if he'd make it," Dave Wilson of the OSPCA later said. "He was probably just trying to survive on the street and someone did this to him."

That may not have been necessarily the case in that it could have been his guardian who shaved him and then abandoned him to the street; his health thereafter could have taken a downward spiral. The important thing, however, is that he was rescued in time, received treatment, and later was adopted. (See Cat Defender post of December 9, 2008 entitled "Shaved from Head to Tail and Left to Freeze to Death in the Ontario Cold, Chopper Is Saved at the Last Minute.")

The repercussions that result from the horrific toll that motorists take on cats even during clement weather is magnified a hundredfold whenever they commit their atrocities during the wintertime. For instance, back on February 16, 2007 a two-year-old brownish-gray cat named Roo was mowed down and left for dead by a hit-and-run motorist on Manor Road in Lower Windsor Township, Pennsylvania.

He thus found himself in a totally hopeless predicament that bears a strikingly resemblance to the one that befell Flick in that the blood from his injuries had frozen his front paws to the road. He was rescued by a compassionate woman who took him to the York SPCA but even then his right paw had to be amputated and his left one was placed in jeopardy due to a fracture. (See Cat Defender post of March 5, 2007 entitled "Run Down by a Motorist and Frozen to the Ice by His Own Blood, Cat Named Roo Is Saved by a Caring Woman.")

Domino. Whatever Became of Her?

A pretty white female kitten with patches of black and brown to go along with captivating green eyes also was run down and left for dead around the middle of January of 2014 in Youngstown, Ohio. She somehow managed to survive that attack but was forced to hobble around town for another fortnight as she in the meantime nearly succumbed to both hunger and the elements.

On January 28th she was rescued by an elderly woman in her eighties named Jean who attempted to procure veterinary assistance for her but every shelter that she contacted wanted to kill the kitten. Eventually she found her way to West Side Cats which not only took in the kitten but named her in her honor. (See January 28, 2014 untitled article on West Side Cats' Facebook page.)

On January 29th, Jean finally received the veterinary treatment that she so desperately needed and richly deserved. Specifically, she was diagnosed to be suffering from a luxating patella (trick knee) and a broken pelvis.

Frostbite also claimed the tops of both of her ears but, mercifully, her hearing was unimpaired. She additionally came through her long and trying ordeal in the cold without any apparent internal organ damage. (See January 29, 2014 untitled article on West Side Cats' Facebook page.)

"Jean is an absolute lover and whoever gets her is in for a real treat," the charity exclaimed March 2, 2014 in an untitled article posted on Facebook. Inexplicably, Jean is not listed on the organization's web site as having been one of its successful adoptions of 2014 and that glaring omission could mean almost anything from either her foster mother having elected to keep her or something tragic.

As revolting as it may be, rescue groups as well as individuals abandon cats to the cold and snow. Back in March of 2008, for instance, when Ann and Mike Hirz of Poynette, Wisconsin, decided to relocate to Green Valley, Arizona, they attempted to leave behind their five-year-old cat, Domino, to tough it out in the cold and snow.

Domino, however, became unwittingly trapped in a shipping crate and thus made the trip with the Hirzes to Green Valley. Instead of rectifying their original mistake and holding on to Domino this time around, they instead took the advice of Paws Patrol and transported her back to Poynette where they abandoned her for a second time.

Ninja and Kristina Clark

"It knows its safety areas. It knows its sources of food and shelter," Patti Hogan of the rescue group argued at that time. "This is Domino's best chance of survival."

For anyone looking for a totally bogus rationale for shirking their moral responsibilities, Hogan's baloney certainly fits the bill. First of all, with the Hirzes long gone Domino no longer had any food, shelter, or safety zones to return to in Poynette.

Much more importantly, her welfare and care was their solemn moral responsibility regardless of whether they continued to reside in either Poynette or Green Valley. It is not known what ultimately became of Domino but her bleak prospects are not pleasant to contemplate. (See Cat Defender post of May 8, 2009 entitled "Domino, Feral and All Alone, Faces an Uncertain Future in Wisconsin Following an Unplanned Trip to Arizona.")

Thankfully, not all cat owners are cold-hearted, low-life exploitative scumbags. For example, on January 25th of last year twenty-two-year-old Kristina Clark of Copper Center refused to allow a total lack of money, the biting cold, avalanches, and even being jailed by the Alaska State Police to dissuade her from procuring life-saving veterinary intervention for her ailing five-year-old gray and white tom, Ninja. As long as there is life on this planet, the heroism and dedication that she showed Ninja will remain the gold standard as to how all cat lovers are judged. (See Cat Defender post of February 15, 2014 entitled "Indefatigable Young Alaskan Woman Overcomes a Lack of Money, Jailing by the Police, and a Series of Avalanches in Order to Save Ninja's Life.")

Looking ahead, there is not a good deal of room for optimism. Not only did Punxsutawney Phil predict six more weeks of winter on Groundhog Day but some meteorologists are expecting the cold and snow to linger on across North America until at least the middle of April. The area accordingly may not see any warm weather until July.

Also, considering the enormous amount of ice covering both the Arctic Circle and Greenland that has yet to melt it certainly looks as if winters in the northern hemisphere are destined to become progressively longer, colder, and wetter in the foreseeable future. Once all the ice has melted, conditions will rapidly deteriorate in the opposite direction.

That can only be interpreted to mean that in addition to Flick countless other cats are destined to suffer and die simply hideous deaths as the result of prolonged exposure to the unforgiving cold. Only caring individuals, the managers of TNR colonies, and the guardians of domestic cats have it in their power to significantly alter that distressing scenario.

Photos: Tail Wagger's 1990 (Flick), Burlington County Times (Frozen Kitten), Maryanne Firth of the St. Catherines Standard (Rosalie), Natasha Schroeder (Blizzard), Daily Mail and SWNS (Frosty), Bill Bowden of the York Daily Record (Roo), West Side Cats (Jean), Green Valley News (Domino), and Kristina Clark (Ninja).

Ace Following Surgery to Remove His Eyes

"I will never know the color of his irises, yet I will never forget the horror I felt looking at his ruptured globes. Not a day goes by without leaving me emotionally exhausted but still totally amazed by the beauty of his soul. He is a survivor and an inspiration and every day I fall in love with him a little more."
-- veterinarian Tina Roggenbeck

Wealthy young man about town Lamont Cranston, old-time radio's The Shadow, claimed to possess the power to fathom the "evil that lurks in the hearts of men" but most mere mortals, no matter how old, jaded, and cynical they may be, are almost helpless when it comes to anticipating the simply outrageous and diabolical abuse that some cat haters are capable of inflicting upon the species. That disturbing reality was driven home in shocking fashion once again back on January 9th when an eighteen-month-old homeless black cat was found frozen to the steps of a porch on Hidden Road in Bangor, Michigan.

Considering that the overnight temperature at the nearest reporting station in Bloomingdale, twenty-two kilometers to the north, was a bone-chilling -5.1° Fahrenheit, it was a miracle that he was still alive when his plight was discovered by Amanda Breasbois-Schulz and her husband. When she bent down in order to examine him, she instantly recognized him as being a neutered tom named Ace from a TNR colony that she had been caring for the past eight months.

She also discovered to her horror that he was suffering from something far more serious than a bad case of hypothermia and frostbite. "When we picked him up...we noticed his eye was completely blown out," she told The Bay City Times on January 16th. (See "Cat Found Blinded and Frozen to Porch in Bay County Has Eyes Removed, Vet Says It's a Case of Abuse.")

Actually, she had significantly understated the case in that both of Ace's eyes had been deliberately gouged out with a foreign object by some unknown cat-hating monster. After several unsuccessful attempts to procure emergency veterinary treatment for him, Breasbois-Schulz finally was able to prevail upon Angels Among Us to treat him for gratis at its Veterinary Health Center (VHC) in Saginaw, thirty-two kilometers to the south.

Ace arrived at VHC at 2 p.m. and veterinarian Katherine "Tina" Roggenbeck wasted no time in surgically removing what was left of both of his eyes during a forty-five minute operation. Neither she nor anyone else has been willing to publicly speculate if that expedient was really necessary.

For instance, it might have been possible to have cleansed and medicated both eyes as a prelude to later surgically repairing them. At least that way it might have been feasible to have restored at least some of his vision.

Based upon the massive damage done to his eyes, however, there can be no doubt that Ace's assailant fully intended to blind him permanently. "Bilateral ruptured globes, ocular and nasal hemorrhage, right cornea perforated, left cornea lacerated medial to lateral, swelling and bruising to the entire periocular-ocular and nasal area, one three to four millimeter laceration over the left maxilla, left nictitans (third eyelid) torn," is how Roggenbeck summed up the catalog of injuries that she found after examining him in e-mail letters sent on January 12th to Bay County Animal Control (BCAC), the Humane Society of Bay County (HSBC), and the Bay County Board of Commissioners.

After conferring with both an ophthalmologist and a radiographer, she concluded that the horrific damage done to Ace's eyes could not have been inflicted by a motorist. "In my professional opinion, this cat's injuries were deliberate, brutal and an act of heinous cruelty," she continued.

She went on to explain that "being hit by a car will not rupture both eyes simultaneously since eye position in the orbit of cats do not face forward (they are both lateralized) and the nose acts as a protective barrier. (Being) hit by a car trauma would have to be so fulminant to rupture both eyes that fracture of the nasal bones, maxillary contribution to the orbital rim, and zygomatic arch (cheek bone) would have to occur."

The Horrific Damage Done to Ace's Eyes

In arriving at that conclusion she erred only when she postulated that cars maim and kill cats. Actually, it is motorists, not their high-powered jalopies, that are responsible for such despicable crimes which invariably are committed for pleasure and with impunity.

She furthermore categorically ruled out the possibility of Ace having been attacked by either a dog, raccoon, or some other animal. "...the skin laceration over the left maxilla is lower than the orbital rim," she continued in her epistle to the high-muck-a-mucks. "In animal on animal attacks, visible signs would include opposing canine punctures, bite wounds, hemorrhage, bruising, et cetera."

As far as it has been revealed, the only damage inflicted on Ace was to his eyes. In particular, no puncture wounds, teeth marks, scrapes, or excoriations of any kind were found on his body. Plus, all of his teeth and claws were intact.

"In my entire career, I have never witnessed a more vicious attack on an animal," Roggenbeck declared. "...this cat's injuries were the result of the unthinkable...the deliberate act of a human."

Overshadowed by all the attention that has been focused on what was done to Ace's eyes has been the issue of his exposure to the elements and on that vitally important matter Roggenbeck has been inexplicably silent. Specifically, no mention has been made of him sustaining frostbite to his paws as was the case with another black cat named Flick who was found a few days later on January 14th with his front paws frozen to a porch in Redford, one-hundred-eighty-seven kilometers to the west of Bangor. (See Cat Defender post of February 23, 2015 entitled "Abandoned to Tough It Out by His Lonesome in the Deadly Michigan Cold and Snow, Flick Sustains Horrific Injuries to His Front Paws When They Become Frozen to a Porch.")

Hopefully, Roggenbeck's reticence to discuss that issue is meant to be taken as an indication that Ace did not sustain any permanent injuries as the result of his exposure to the cold. Although it is by no means clear, the assumption is that he was mutilated sometime on January 8th and then dumped on Breasbois-Schulz's porch either later that night or early the following morning. In hindsight, it seems beyond dispute that his assailant was relying upon the Arctic cold in order to exacerbate, if not indeed finish, the job that began with Ace's intentional blinding.

Ace remained in Roggenbeck's care at VHC until February 3rd when fluid unexpectedly began to seep from his now vacant right eye socket. That in turn necessitated in him having to be rushed to the Animal Ophthalmology Center (AOC) in Williamston, one-hundred-five kilometers south of Saginaw, where specialist David T. Ramsey found and removed two cysts. An unspecified amount of abnormal pigmented tissue also was found but it is not known if it too was excised.

In spite of that scary setback, Roggenbeck insisted at the time that Ace was doing fine. "We got back here Tuesday night (February 3rd) and he is doing absolutely fabulous," she told The Bay City Times on February 6th. (See "Ace the Blinded Bay County Cat Has Home Lined Up as Investigation Continues.")"He is absolutely the most incredible, fantastic cat I have ever met in my life."

Without eyes, returning him to the TNR colony managed by Breasbois-Schulz was now totally out of the question. Although Roggenbeck temporarily entertained the notion of adding him to the twenty-three felines, four Alsatians, and pair of horses that reside with her and her husband in Bridgeport, eleven kilometers to the south of Saginaw, she ultimately decided to put him up for adoption.

David T. Ramsey Removes Cysts from Ace's Right Eye Socket

On February 13th, he finally left her surgery in order to go and live with a woman identified only as Tina. He did not go alone, however, in that Tina graciously agreed to also adopt a brown, gray, and white cat named Jack from Breasbois-Schulz's colony. The pair of newcomers have now joined Little Bear, Pumpkin, and Bailey at her residence somewhere in either Saginaw or the surrounding community.

"I have never heard a cat purr as loudly as this guy. He loves meeting people. He's a wonderful little guy," Roggenbeck exclaimed to The Bay City Times in the February 6th article cited supra. "Wherever he goes, he's going to flourish. To see that he has been able to forgive, it's amazing to me."

According to periodical updates posted on his Facebook page, Ace's Odyssey, he initially appeared to be doing exactly that. His weight increased considerably from the 7.8 pounds that he weighed at the time of his rescue and he seemed to be getting on famously not only with Tina but his four playmates as well.

Sadly, it was reported March 11th on Ace's Odyssey that cysts had been found in his left eye socket so it looks like he will be making a return trip to AOC in order to have them removed. Without being a feline ophthalmologist it is impossible to speculate as to either what has caused the cysts to develop or if they are destined to be a recurring problem for him. The good news is that apparently no new ones have formed in his right eye socket.

Other than that his prognosis, while still guarded, appears to be encouraging. After a protective Elizabethan collar was removed, his nails were trimmed on February 5th in order to deter him from unintentionally damaging his surgically repaired eye sockets.

That preventative measure did absolutely nothing, however, in order to protect him from the potential damage that his playmates might inadvertently inflict upon him. Since he is unable to anticipate and thus dodge their blows, it perhaps would have been better if he had been adopted into a home where he was the only cat.

Roggenbeck sans doute considered that option but ultimately rejected it. Aside from his need for companionship, his fellow felines hopefully will assist him in learning his way around Tina's house. Sadly, that is destined to constitute the extent of his entire world in that it would be foolish to allow him outdoors unless he is either on a leash or kept inside an enclosed area.

His other senses also should become more acute over time and that will help him to compensate somewhat for the loss of his eyesight. Once his whiskers, which were inexplicably removed by either his assailant, Roggenbeck, or Ramsey, grow back he accordingly will be able to significantly better gauge the distance between objects and passageways.

According to Alana Miller who for the past decade has cared for around ninety cats at the Blind Cat Rescue and Sanctuary in St. Pauls, North Carolina, a sightless cat can do almost anything that a sighted one can and that includes climbing trees and cabinets. The one accommodation that she does suggest making, however, is that rooms within a house be outfitted with different types of flooring (carpeting, tile, et cetera) so as to assist a cat in orienting itself should it be either bandied about or temporarily lose its bearings.

Ace Is Comforted by Maddie and Lynn

"Back when we started our shelter, there was just no place for them. If you were unadoptable, you were just dead," she told Care2.com on November 30, 2012. (See "Blind Cat Sanctuary Offers Cage-Free Oasis.")"Somebody has to say 'enough.' Once a cat arrives here, they're done. No more being bounced around."

It is just a shame that it took so terribly long for the world to finally realize that blind cats are worth saving and that their lives have value. (See Cat Defender post of September 27, 2007 entitled "Abandoned to Die in a World of Darkness and Without Even Teeth, Maxwell Is Saved by the Compassion of a Rescue Group and a Veterinarian.")

Fortunately for Ace, he now has a home but his assailant is still at large and thus free to prey upon other cats. Although cats, unlike humans, do not carry grudges, he most definitely never will forget the face of the devil who blinded him.

"It's amazing to us that he has any trust left at all," Roggenbeck marveled to The Bay City Times in the January 16th article cited supra. "His last vision would have been (of) whoever did this to him."

Although she has offered at $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of his assailant, she surely must have known well beforehand that such an act of beau geste was destined to be a total waste of time in that cat abusers and killers are almost never even investigated, let alone arrested, prosecuted, and punished. Ill-equipped to conduct such an investigation herself, she in all likelihood fell back upon that expedient in utter desperation.

A far better option would have been to put that money to work by retaining the services of a private dick to look into the matter. Pet detectives who locate lost animals already exist and there is not any obvious reason why a new breed of Philip Marlowes and Sam Spades could not be employed to apprehend cat abusers.

Her decision to call upon the assistance of BCAC also demonstrated extremely poor judgment in that the agency devoted, at the most, only a few hours of its time investigating the matter. "We sent two Animal Control officers to canvass the neighborhood in hopes someone witnessed or knew by word of mouth who the perpetrator might be. However, that was unsuccessful," its director Mike Halstead told The Bay City Times in the second of two articles dated January 16th. (See "Investigators Hopeful Reward Money May Generate Leads in Bay County Cat-Blinding Case.")"(January 15th), I contacted Jill Fritz and we're going to be forwarding everything we have to her at this point, in the hopes that the Humane Society (of the United States) will see fit to offer a reward for the perpetrator of this action. We're hoping if a person's moral turpitude doesn't dictate that they tell us what they know in our canvass, perhaps the financial incentive will."

Even after so quickly washing his hands of the entire matter, Halstead had the unmitigated gall to declare his steadfastness. "We're staying on top of it and hopefully we'll turn something up," he gassed to The Bay City Times, presumably with a straight face.

As Roggenbeck should have had the bon sens to realize, the number one rule when it comes to protecting and defending cats is to always steer clear of known cat killers and abusers and that admonition applies in spades to a rotten bum like Halstead. For example on May 26, 2010, he ordered the murder of a six-week-old kitten that not only had a home waiting for it in Washington State but individuals from such far-flung climes as California, Iowa, and Sweden also had expressed an interest in adopting it.

At that time he attempted to chalk up the confusion surrounding the kitten's status to the general hustle and bustle that accompanies operating a shelter. The employee "probably just did it (announce that the kitten was up for adoption) because we're always busy," he declared. "It was the wrong thing to do. We operate an aboveboard operation here."

Ace Is Visited by a Couple at Roggenbeck's Surgery

By that he meant that under Michigan law BCAC is allowed to kill after five days all animals that arrive at its shelter without collars. He also relied upon the fact that the kitten was suffering from a preeminently treatable common cold as another reason for snuffing out its life. More than likely it was healthy when it arrived and only became sick as the result of being exposed to the unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, and stress that are endemic to such hellhole institutions.

He also dishonestly attempted to excuse his own heinous crime by fobbing off blame on both the fecundity of cats as well as the failure of their owners to pay the sky-high sterilization fees that veterinarians demand. "If you start with a pair of cats, by the time they're done they will have accounted for thousands because of their litter and their litter's litter and so on," he pontificated. "It's a travesty that people let that happen, and we just can't warehouse them. It's unfortunate but that's what happens when people behave irresponsibly and therein lies the problem."

Au contraire, the problem lies with mass murderers like Halstead and BCAC who are permitted year after year to line their pockets by slaughtering en masse cats and dogs. First of all, cats, dogs, and other animals do not belong in jail under any circumstances. They have not committed any crimes, unless breathing is now considered to be a capital offense, and none of them ever receive anything even remotely resembling a due process hearing.

Secondly, although Americans themselves are notoriously stingy, the country itself is not poor and there certainly is more than enough money available to not only sterilize all homeless cats but to place them in either loving homes, managed TNR colonies, or sanctuaries. What needs to be done is to get the money out of the pockets of the exterminators and into the hands of those individuals and groups who have an abiding respect for the sanctity of feline life.

The only operation that Halstead and BCAC are interested in running, however, is a death house. For instance, during the first quarter of 2010 the agency killed all but eleven of the three-hundred-sixty-four cats that it impounded and that equates to a kill rate of ninety-seven per cent. The only known shelter with a higher kill rate is the one in Norfolk, Virginia, that is run by PETA.

BCAC also is guilty of discriminating against cats in that during the same period it secured homes for one-hundred-sixty-five of the three-hundred-twenty-one dogs that it took in and that works out to a kill rate of 48.6 per cent. (See Cat Defender post of June 15, 2010 entitled "Bay City Shelter Murders a Six-Week-Old Kitten with a Common Cold Despite Several Individuals Having Offered to Give It a Permanent Home.")

Halstead's appalling lack of respect for the sanctity of feline life coupled with his total unwillingness to secure homes for impounded cats and to investigate cases of animal cruelty is not all that surprising in that he is a retired Bay City fireman without any prior experience in operating a shelter. It therefore is pretty much a sure bet that he is a multiple dipper at the public trough who only secured his current sinecure through his links to the political establishment in Bay City.

Although there are a few professional and dedicated Animal Control officers, bums like Halstead constitute the norm. For example, when Barry Accorti retired from the North Ridgeville Police Department in 2012 after thirty-one years on the public's dime he was given the job of being the Ohio town's Animal Control officer so that he, like Halstead, could pocket another handout from the taxpayers in addition to his lavish pension.

Totally unqualified to even clean toilets, let alone to be entrusted with the care and welfare of animals, it did not take him long before he shot to death a quintuplet of eight- to ten-week-old kittens on June 10, 2013. (See The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, June 11, 2013, "North Ridgeville Clears Humane Officer of Wrongdoing for Killing Feral Kittens, but Animal Groups Want Action.")

Ace and Jack with Their New Mom, Tina

He then followed up that dastardly deed by shooting to death a baby raccoon on June 9, 2014. (See The Chronicle-Telegram of Elyria, June 10, 2014, "Parent Alleges Officer Killed Raccoon in Front of Kids.")

As utterly revolting as conditions are in both Bay City and North Ridgeville, they cannot hold a candle to what occurred in August of 2006 at the Old Webster Road shelter in Oxford, Massachusetts. That was when forty-one-year-old Animal Control officer Michelle A. Mulverhill deserted her post and went on a bender.

Even more astounding, oversight was so lax that her dereliction of duty was not even noticed until sixteen days later! (See Cat Defender post of August 31, 2006 entitled “Animal Control Officer Goes on a Drunken Binge and Leaves Four Cats and a Dog to Die of Thirst, Hunger, and Heat at a Massachusetts Shelter.”)

Although Roggenbeck did receive a prompt e-mail response from Halstead’s boss, Bay County Executive Thomas L. Hickner, that was all that she was able to get out of him, that is unless crocodile tears and outlandish lies count for anything. “Please be assured we share your outrage at the violence which resulted in the cruelty toward this animal,” he stated according to the second of two Bay City Times’ articles dated January 16th. “Since learning yesterday of the incident, staff of Bay County Animal Control have been conducting a thorough investigation into the matter to attempt to obtain the identity of the perpetrator and circumstances surrounding the act so we may refer the matter to the Bay County prosecutor."

C’est-à-dire, he has Halstead’s back and Halstead has his. Their intransigence on this and other animal welfare issues also means that no cat is safe anywhere in Bay County.

Even though back in 2010 it was precisely Jeannie Wolicki-Nichols of the BCHS who had lined up the home in Washington State for the kitten that Halstead subsequently killed, this time around she lavished all of her concern, not on Ace, but rather his attacker. “Animal abuse is a dress rehearsal for the future and we need to take this very seriously,” she cautioned in the second Bay City Times’ article dated January 16th. “I certainly hope whoever knows about this situation comes forward so the person who could do such a horrendous act can get the help he needs.”

Evidently the moral decay and general all-around rot that so characterizes the thinking and behavior of Halstead and Hickner now has spread to Wolicki-Nichols as well because help is the absolute last thing that Ace’s attacker needs; on the contrary, what he needs and deserves is to be apprehended, prosecuted and convicted, and then placed behind bars for the remainder of his miserable existence. Even more fittingly, his eyes should be gouged out and all of society should shun him so as to leave him with no alternative other than to aimlessly wander the earth much like Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.

As utterly inexcusable as were the responses from BCAC, BCHS, and Hickner, it took the entry of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) into the fray in order to reveal the true burlesque nature of the proceedings. “If there is an arrest and conviction, we would pay out the reward to the people who sent in the tips,” the organization’s top dog in the Wolverine State, Jill Fritz, told The Bay City Times in the first article dated January 16th.

Even that offer of $5,000 came with enough caveats so as to make it all but meaningless. Specifically, Fritz added that even before the moola would be put up an investigating agency would need to determine that Ace’s wounds were indeed the result of cruelty and to request the assistance of the HSUS. “It’s up to law enforcement to determine it was allegedly done deliberately and we’re glad to help if they need help in apprehending a suspect,” she made clear.

Forever Six Weeks Old, the Bay City Kitten

As far as it is known, the Bangor Police Department (BPD) is not involved in the investigation in any shape, form, or fashion and considering the intransigence of the BCAC, BCHS, and Hickner, the HSUS has little or no need to fear that it ever will be forced to part with so much as a lousy penny from its bulging hoard of greenbacks. After all, it has been widely reported on the web that the organization spends less than one per cent of its annual operating budget of $125 million on the care of animals in need; the remainder either goes into the pockets of its employees or is used in order to raise additional funds.

Beyond its utterly revolting niggardliness, the HSUS is about as far removed from a legitimate animal protection agency as one can get without first doing a half gainer into the sack with those miserable, rotten cat stealers and killers at PETA. First of all, it certainly is not a fan of cats and that was vividly demonstrated by its simply disgraceful sellout of those living on San Nicolas to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. (See Cat Defender posts of June 27, 2008, July 10, 2008, April 28, 2009, November 20, 2009, and February 24, 2012 entitled, respectively, “United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy Hatch a Diabolical Plan to Gun Down Two-Hundred Cats on San Nicolas Island,” “The Ventura Star Races to the Defense of the Cat Killers on San Nicolas Island,” “Quislings at the Humane Society Sell Out San Nicolas’s Cats to the Assassins at the Diabolical United States Fish and Wildlife Society,” “Memo to the Humane Society: Tell the World Exactly How many Cats You and Your Honeys at the USFWS Have Murdered on San Nicolas Island,” and “United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Humane Society Hoist a Glass in Celebration of Their Extermination of the Cats on San Nicolas Island.”)

Secondly, it has joined forces with such sworn enemies of the species as the American Bird Conservancy and The New York Times. (See Cat Defender post of June 15, 2009 entitled “American Bird Conservancy, The New York Times, and the Humane Society Unite to Form an Achse des Bösen Against Cats.”)

Thirdly, in an article penned for the Huffington Post on February 15, 2013, no-kill advocate Nathan J. Winograd disclosed that the HSUS gave its highest award to a shelter in Davidson County, North Carolina, that has a long and checkered history of illegally gassing cats and dogs. (See “Who Is Really Standing for Animals?”) Even more outrageously, the organization labeled that mass extermination camp as “a shelter we love.”

Likewise in Texas, Winograd reported that the HSUS helped to defeat a bill that would have put an end to the gassing of shelter animals. Clearly, the HSUS has absolutely no business pretending to speak up for cats and other animals.

With BCAC, BCHS, Hickner, the HSUS, and the BPD sitting on their fat cracks and exercising only their forked tongues, it is anything but surprising that Ace’s assailant remains at large more than two months after the attack. Absolutely nothing meaningful appears to have been done in order to bring him to justice and by now the crime has been all but forgotten by those charged with enforcing the minimalist standards of the anti-cruelty statutes in Michigan.

At the very minimum, either Roggenbeck or someone from the BPD should have collected scrapings from underneath his claws and combed his fur, particularly the area around his eyes, for forensic evidence. Secondly, Breasbois-Schulz’s porch, yard, and driveway should have been examined for foot and tire prints and molds made of any that were found.

Thirdly, either the BPD or BCAC should have made, not one, but a long series of persistent, intermittent door-to-door canvasses of the neighborhood. That in itself might have rattled enough heads in order to have forced someone into coming forward.

The only way that cases of animal cruelty ever will be solved is when law enforcement personnel apply the same tactics, procedures, and amounts of resources to them that they now devote exclusively to acts of violence that are committed against persons and property. Outbursts of self-righteous moral indignation, a false reliance upon hope, insincere offers of reward money, and appeals to the public are not only disingenuous but largely a complete waste of time as well. (See Cat Defender post of January 6, 2010 entitled “Large Reward Fails to Lead to the Capture of the Archer Who Shot an Arrow Through Brownie’s Head.”)

Big Bob Lost a Leg to an Attacker but Survived

Surprisingly, there has been absolutely zero speculation in either the press or on Ace’s Odyssey as to who committed this heinous act. The general tenor of the public debate, however, tends to suggest that the authorities have chalked up the attack to just another randomized act of violence perpetrated upon a defenseless cat by, most likely, either a juvenile delinquent or an adult sociopath.

The circumstances surrounding Ace’s blinding, however, tend to point to the exact opposite conclusion. In that regard the most compelling motive is that he was savaged as a way of getting back at Breasbois-Schulz for her championing of the cause of homeless cats.

Although it has not been publicly disclosed how close her house is located to the TNR colony that she manages, it nonetheless would appear that Ace was intentionally blinded and then either carried or driven to her residence and dumped. That reasoning is based upon the twin facts that presumably he did not know where she lived and, even if he did, he would not have been able to have found his way there after he had been robbed of his vision.

It also would be illuminating to know if other members of her colony either have been attacked or mysteriously disappeared without so much as a trace. Damage done to the cats' shelters, overturned food and water dishes, and verbal abuse and threats directed at Breasbois-Schulz are clues that should not be ignored.

One of the major Achilles' heels of TNR colonies is the total lack of security that they afford their members and that in turn leaves them vulnerable to all sorts of attacks from cat haters. For example in early December of 2010, a four-year-old Russian Blue named Big Bob who belonged to a colony located on the northside of Indianapolis that was managed by IndyFeral not only was shot in the thigh by an assailant armed with a gun but he also was run down by a hit-and-run motorist and left for dead.

Although he ended up losing one of his rear legs, he did manage to survive thanks to the prompt veterinary care that he received from the Humane Society of Indianapolis. (See Cat Defender post of January 5, 2011 entitled "Gunned Down by an Assassin and Then Mowed Down by a Hit-and-Run Driver, Big Bob Loses a Leg but Survives and Now Is Looking for a Home.")

It is not merely the cats themselves but often their caretakers as well that sometimes come under violent attacks. That is the cruel and utterly lawless fate that has befallen kindhearted Irene Borecky who cares for a colony of fourteen cats at a co-op on Garnet Janes Road in the Etobicoke section of western Toronto.

In particular, cat-hating fiends at the complex routinely curse her, train their garden hoses on her, and come after her with baseball bats. "These people are hostile towards the cats and anyone who helps them," she disclosed to the Toronto Star on October 20th of last year. (See "Helping Feral Cats Shouldn't Be a Risky Business.")

The hooligans even went so far as to curse and threaten to steal the camera of Jack Lakey of the Toronto Star when he accompanied her on one of her trips to the housing complex in order to feed the cats. As a working member of the capitalist media who consistently has defended homeless cats, especially the Bluffers Park TNR colony in Toronto's Scarborough District, Lakey is the rarest of journalists and his willingness to put his life on the line for those in Etobicoke is another shining example of his steadfastness of their behalf. (See Cat Defender post of September 15, 2011 entitled "Ravenous Coyotes, Cat-Haters, and Old Man Winter All Want Her Dead, Buried, and Gone but Brave Little Half Mask Is Defying All the Odds.")

A Trio of the Homeless Cats That Are Under Siege in Etobicoke

The cats themselves have been treated even worse in that the residents not only train their garden hoses but their dogs on them as well. At last report, Borecky was racing against the clock in order to trap and relocate them before the residents make good on their threat to trap and deliver them over to the knackers at Animal Services to exterminate.

One-hundred-sixty-two kilometers to the west of Toronto on a quiet cul-de-sac in London, Greg and Barb Horne have drawn the ire of their neighbors not only due to their feeding of homeless cats but also because doing so is allegedly attracting coyotes to the neighborhood. (See the Toronto Sun, January 20, 2015, "Neighbors Concerned after Coyote Shows Up to Couple's Regular Feral Cat Feeding.")

Wildlife biologists, especially those affiliated with the United States government, also are vehemently opposed to the existence of TNR colonies but they usually do not engage in mutilations; rather, they content themselves with either expelling or simply killing the cats. (See Cat Defender posts of August 7, 2014 and April 17, 2010 entitled, respectively, "The National Park Service Racks Up a Major Victory by Expelling the Plum Beach Cats but It Is Thwarted in Its Burning Desire to Dance a Merry Little Jig on Their Graves" and "Lake Lanier's Cats Face an Uncertain Future Following Their Ouster by the Liars and Defamers at the United States Army Corps of Engineers.")

Gardeners are another devious pack of criminals who will stop at almost nothing in order to get rid of cats and one of the worst offenders in that regard, Mark Oberschmidt, resides in Saginaw. (See Cat Defender post of August 19, 2010 entitled "Music Lessons and Buggsey Are Murdered by a Cat-Hating Gardener and an Extermination Factory Posing as an Animal Shelter in Saginaw.")

By leaps and bounds, however, it is ornithologists who hate cats with the greatest passion. For example, the Smithsonian Institution's Nicole Dauphiné was caught red-handed back in 2011 attempting to poison a TNR colony in Washington. (See Cat Defender posts of July 12, 2011, November 18, 2011, and January 6, 2012 entitled, respectively, "The Arrest of Nico Dauphiné for Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats Unmasks the National Zoo as a Hideout for Ailurophobes and Criminals,""Nico Dauphiné, Ph.D., Is Convicted of Attempting to Poison a Colony of Homeless Cats but Questions Remain Concerning the Smithsonian's Role," and "Nico Dauphiné Is Let Off with an Insultingly Lenient $100 Fine in a Show Trial That Was Fixed from the Very Beginning.")

There was absolutely nothing sneaky about the modus operandi employed by amateur ornithologist James Munn Stevenson of Galveston back in 2006 in that instead of using poison he merely trained his rifle on cats. (See Cat Defender posts of November 22, 2006, May 1, 2007, November 20, 2007, December 8, 2007, and August 7, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Evil Galveston Bird Lover Is Finally Arrested After Having Gunned Down Hundreds of Cats,""Houston Chronicle Launches a Propaganda Offensive on Behalf of Serial Cat Killer Jim Stevenson,""Bird Lovers All Over the World Rejoice as Serial Killer James M. Stevenson Is Rewarded by a Galveston Court for Gunning Down Hundreds of Cats,""All the Lies that Fit: Scheming New York Times Hires a Bird Lover to Render His 'Unbiased' Support of James M. Stevenson," and "Crime Pays! Having Made Fools Out of Galveston Prosecutors, Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson Is Now a Hero and Laughing All the Way to the Bank.")

The National Audubon Society's Ted Williams even became so emboldened with his own self-importance, invincibility, runaway egotism, and patented criminality back in 2013 that he issued a clarion call for cats to be poisoned with Tylenol® and, even more outrageously, the Orlando Sentinel seconded that proposal by publishing it. (See Cat Defender post of May 11, 2013 entitled "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It.")

The point of this extremely long digression is to demonstrate that what was done to Ace does not appear to have been a routine case of animal cruelty. His assailant wanted to not only injure him to to make him suffer for as long as he lives and that type of malice is most commonly exhibited by ornithologists.

For instance in December of 2010, seventy-four-year-old amateur ornithologist Ernst Bernhard K. from the Moosach section of München illegally trapped his neighbor's cat, Rocco. Instead of either killing him on the spot or fobbing him off on a shelter to do his dirty work for him, he instead subjected the caged tom to eleven consecutive days of bombardment with water and pepper spray before finally killing him. (See Cat Defender posts of January 19, 2011, August 8, 2011, and August 17, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Bird Lover in München Illegally Traps Rocco and Then Methodically Tortures Him with Water and Pepper Spray over an Eleven-Day Period,""Ernst K.'s Trial for Kidnapping, Torturing, and Murdering Rocco Nears Its Climax in a München Courtroom," and "Ernst K. Walks Away Smelling Like a Rose as Both the Prosecutor and Judge Turn His Trial for Killing Rocco into a Lovefest for a Sadistic Cat Killer.")

Marmalade

There is one vitally important difference however between what was done to Rocco and the heinous crime that was committed against Ace and that revolves around the methodology employed. "I can't imagine, and I don't want to know, how that (the blinding) was done," Roggenbeck declared to The Bay City Times in the first of two articles dated January 16th. "It's absolutely the most heinous thing I have seen in my career."

Unpleasant though it may be, that very well could be the key to solving this case. With Rocco, although he was caged he was still able to put up quite a spirited fight and that later was attested to by his worn-down claws.

In Ace's case, it appears that he was trapped and then placed in some type of restraining device that not only kept his head stationary but would not permit him to use either his front or rear claws. The only known such device that readily comes to mind is a stereotactic one that scum-of-the-earth vivisectors use in order to, inter alia, blind cats, sever their spinal cords, and to drill electrodes into their brains.

The localized damage done to his eyes coupled with the absence of a projectile would tend to rule out the possibility that his attacker used some type of a firearm. It also appears that merely trapping him would not in itself have facilitated the gouging out of his eyes because he still would have been able to twist and turn his body as well as to move his head.

Of course, it is always conceivable that the cretin who did this to him sedated him after he got his hands on him. Toxicology tests, had they been performed, would have detected the presence of barbiturates in his system.

His assailant therefore could have been an ornithologist, either an amateur or a professional, with access to the types of restraining devices that are used in animal research laboratories. Whether or not there is any validity to that theory, all known ornithologists and vivisectors with even so much as a remote connection to the area surrounding the TNR colony should be regarded as prime suspects. The same scrutiny also should be given to all TNR opponents, gardeners, and known cat haters.

All of them accordingly should be interviewed by the BPD and placed under surveillance. Should circumstances so merit, search warrants for their residences and offices should be procured and promptly executed.

If forensic evidence had been taken from Ace at Roggenbeck's surgery it then could have been matched up against any found at their homes and businesses and the police then would have been able to have made an arrest. Perhaps then there would be fewer cases of this kind. At the very least, it is high time that some of these monsters were exposed, caught, and severely punished.

Although it would not appear to be applicable in this case, another common methodology employed in order to facilitate the blinding of cats is to imprison them in cages as a prelude to systematically starving them to the point where they are too weak in order to offer any resistance. That appears to have been the means that a still at large assailant from Lytham St. Annes in Lancashire used back in 2012 in order to blind five cats.

Pickle

Two of them were found in a cardboard box on a road leading to the Easterleigh Animal Sanctuary (EAS) on August 24th by a member of the charity who was out walking a dog. Another pair was found later in the day wandering in nearby fields while the fifth cat was discovered the following day.

All of them had one eye that had been gouged out as well as numerous cuts in and around their eye sockets but that was far from being all that ailed them. Specifically, they were covered in fleas and emaciated to the point of being anemic.

Under those circumstances it is even doubtful that they would have been able to eat even if they had somehow been able to secure food because their teeth had rotted. If all of that were not bad enough, they were soaked to the bone from the rain.

They were taken to a local Vets4Pets surgery where Andrew Harrison confirmed the their rescuers' worst fears. "My gut feeling would be that torture had probably taken place," he told the Daily Mail on August 30, 2012. (See "'I've Seen Some Bad Things, but this Is One of the Worst': Hunt for Sick Sadist Who Gouged Out This Cat's Eye in Horrific Attack.")"Some had older damage while the damage to others was quite recent."

Inexcusably, he elected to immediately whack three of them. "We thought it fairer on them to put the others to sleep," he told the Daily Mail.

Mandy Leigh of EAS wholeheartedly concurred in that morally repugnant decision. "I'll give any animal a chance but the others were past anybody's help," she bellowed in apparent ignorance of the glaring contradictions in both logic and language contained in such a declaration. "One of the surviving cats will be blind and it is difficult to know if they will survive."

Harrison likewise did not hold out much hope for the survivors, Marmalade and Pickle. "All we can do now is feed them gradually, bathe them and give them as much treatment as we can and hope the remaining two survive," is how he summed up the glum prognosis for them.

Like the authorities in Bay County, the RSPCA failed to demonstrate any real interest in apprehending the cats' torturer. "Anyone who dumps a animal is breaking the law (but) to abandon them when they are in such terrible health makes this case even more callous," the organization's Alison Wilford snorted to the Daily Mail. "We are looking into this matter and want to hear from anyone who saw someone acting suspiciously in the area at the time when these cats were dumped or who recognizes Pickle and Marmalade and knows where they have come from."

Regrettably, it has not proven possible to determine whatever became of Marmalade and Pickle. Apparently, remaining at EAS was out of the question in that the charity quickly announced that they were going to be put up for adoption.

Ace and Tina Are Soldiering On Despite All the Setbacks

For her part, Leigh believes that the cats were dumped at the sanctuary, not by their attacker, but rather by someone who had rescued them and that same chain of events conceivably could have played out in Bangor. Since it usually is somewhat easier to solve crimes where there are more than one individual involved, that is an additional reason why the authorities in Bay County should have vigorously looked into the attack on Ace.

This case also refocuses attention on the pressing need for heightened security at all TNR colonies, but especially the one managed by Breasbois-Schulz. Such an undertaking must by necessity begin and end with the volunteers themselves because it is a foregone conclusion that neither the police nor humane groups can be counted upon to lift so much as a finger in order to safeguard the lives of homeless cats.

The volunteers need first of all to spend significantly more time with the cats that are under their protection. Secondly, the installation of surveillance cameras is an idea worth considering.

If at all feasible, it would be preferable if these colonies were relocated on private property that is under the control of the cats' caretakers. That way any trespassers, whether they be individuals intent upon doing the cats harm or simply nosey governmental officials, would be taxed with the onus of legally justifying their presence within the colonies.

Colonies located in cold climates also need to be furnished with heated shelters. If that is not feasible, an effort needs to be made to at least round up the cats and confine them inside some type of enclosure whenever the thermometer drops below 0° Fahrenheit.

All of that is unquestionably asking a lot of the volunteers but helping cats to persevere in an extremely hostile world never has been easy. Besides, the homeless cat protection movement has come too far to turn back now. The road ahead is going to be both difficult and terribly expensive but the volunteers need to remain steadfast and committed.

Roggenbeck certainly has done a herculean job of not only treating Ace but in standing by him throughout his several setbacks and for all of that she is richly deserving of all the credit in the world. Through her work at Angels Among Us and at the VHC, Saginaw now has something that it truly can be proud of aside from Lefty Frizzell's 1964 country chart-topper, "Saginaw, Michigan."(See The Bay City Times, August 11, 2014, "Saginaw Township's Dr. Tina Roggenbeck Among Twenty Finalists Vying for the Title of 'America's Favorite Veterinarian'.")

"Pictures can't begin to tell you what it (the blinding) did to our hearts and soul," she told The Bay City Times in the first article dated January 16th. While that sans doute is true, it is Ace who has suffered an even more egregious and lasting loss.

In the unlikely event that an eye transplant is in his future, he never will see another sunset, cat, or friendly human face and there simply is not any way of sugarcoating that terrible reality. He at least from all accounts seems to have been placed in a good home and that should make his life, while it never will be quite the same again, at least bearable. That in no way should be mistaken as just compensation for having been robbed of his eyesight but it is all that he has left and that certainly is far better than having been left with nothing at all.

In the final analysis, there simply is not any way of getting around either the sadness or the anger that this attack has unleashed. To her credit, however, Roggenbeck is making an impressive effort to do both.

"I will never know the color of his irises, yet I will never forget the horror I felt looking at his ruptured globes," she opined January 27th on Ace's Odyssey in a short article that succinctly encapsulated the melancholy, revulsion, exasperation, and thankfulness that she felt at that time. "Not a day goes by without leaving me emotionally exhausted but still totally amazed by the beauty of his soul. He is a survivor and an inspiration and every day I fall in love with him a little more."

There is far too much evil in this world for love to ever prevail a majority of the time but in Ace's case it may just have a fighting chance of at least holding its own.

Photos: Facebook (Ace), John Elke of The Bay City Times (kitten), Reed Parker of WIBC Radio of Indianapolis (Big Bob), Jack Lakey of the Toronto Star (Etobicoke cats) and the Manchester Evening News (Marmalade and Pickle).

Long-Suffering George

"It was quite a shock to see how skinny George was when he first arrived here. His teeth were also in a terrible state which would have meant eating was difficult and very painful for him."
-- Deana Perrin of Margaret Green Animal Rescue

There arguably is not anything sadder in this world than the deplorable plight of elderly cats. Often sickly and with their physical and mental powers on the decline, they are routinely abandoned by their owners and thus forced to play a young cat's game in an extremely hostile world.

Ill-equipped at their advanced years to secure sustenance, shelter, and veterinary care for themselves, they nevertheless are forced into mounting desperate, last-ditch attempts to go on living. In addition to all of those deprivations, the psychological loneliness and fears that accompany such a rude uprooting so late in life surely are even more difficult for them to manage.

That pretty much sums up the dire straits that an estimated eleven and one-half year old handsome orange-colored tom named George found himself in last September. His already desperate situation was further complicated by the fact that his teeth had all but rotted out of his mouth.

The unbearable pain occasioned by his dental woes had made eating such an ordeal that he had withered away to being little more than a bag of bones. In all probability he would not have lasted much longer on his own if he had not had the good fortune to unwittingly stumble into one of Pets at Home's retail outlets in Liskeard, Cornwall.

After offering him some food, employees of England's largest pet store contacted Margaret Green's Wingletang Rescue and Rehoming Centre for Dogs and Cats in Tavistock, Devon, which promptly came and collected him. "It was quite a shock to see how skinny George was when he first arrived here," the charity's Deana Perrin told The Plymouth Herald on September 30th. (See "Abandoned Cat Heads to Pets at Home to Find Help.")"His teeth were also in a terrible state which would have meant eating was difficult and very painful for him."

Almost nothing is known about either George's past or how long that he had been sleeping rough. Based upon his friendly demeanor and enjoyment in cuddling, he obviously at one time had had a loving home.

That observation is buttressed by the telltale imprints left on his fur. "It was obvious that George had been in a home at some point as he had a mark around his neck where a collar had been," Perrin added to The Plymouth Herald. "At some point his collar must have been excruciatingly tight as the skin around his neck is completely bald."

In that regard George is extremely fortunate that he was able to have gotten free of it before it choked the life out of him. (See Cat Defender posts of May 28, 2008 and June 22, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Collars Turn into Death Traps for Trooper and Que but Both Are Rescued at the Eleventh Hour" and "Hobson Is Forced to Wander Around Yorkshire for Months Trapped in an Elastic Collar That Steadily Was Eating Away at His Shoulder and Leg.")

At Margaret Green's, George's teeth were extracted and he was placed on a diet of soft food. That expedient worked miracles in that he immediately began to put on weight and for the first time in a long while he found himself free of pain.

Anyone who ever has suffered from prolonged dental pain, especially that associated with either a wisdom tooth or an aggravated nerve, can readily identify with what life must have been like for him before his teeth were removed. Unfortunately, the fur on his neck has yet to grow back and it is unclear if that is going to create problems, such as infections and sun damage, for him.

Although photographs of him have appeared in the local press, his previous owner has not come forward to reclaim him. That in turn can only mean that that individual either is dead, living elsewhere, or does not want him back.

Although Margaret Green initially had high hopes of promptly placing him in a new home, those plans have yet to come to fruition. Since he is an elderly cat with special needs, the charity is looking to place him in a rural setting.

Since his arrival at the shelter he has become a big favorite of both staffers and volunteers and they accordingly are not in any hurry to push him out the door. Best of all, they insist that he is welcome to stay with them for however long it takes in order to find him a new home.

Anyone interested in adopting this wonderful and long-suffering cat can contact the charity by e-mail at wt@margaretgreenanimalrescue.org.uk. It also can be reached by telephone at 49-01822 810215

Considering George's advanced years and health issues, Margaret Green most likely would prefer to place him with a family somewhere in either Devon or Dorset because doing so would spare him the ordeal of having to undergo a grueling trip by either plane or car. If a nearby home does not eventually become available, however, the charity could be forced into looking farther afield.

Regardless of where he finally ends up, George is destined to make a fabulous addition to someone's home. Old cats not only have value, they are simply the best!

George Is a Big Favorite of Staffers

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened," Anatole France once observed and there is not any better way of beginning that process than by opening up one's heart and home to an elderly cat. Whether he lives eleven more days or another eleven years, whoever gets custody of George will soon realize that they are truly the lucky ones for being able to share his life.

Whereas being abandoned during the twilight of life is bad enough in its own right, many cats that wind up in that terrible predicament are ill-suited to make it on their own because, ironically, of the naked abuse and mutilations that they have suffered as the result of their domestication.

For example, those that have been cruelly declawed are no longer able to procure food, defend themselves, and even to climb. (See Cat Defender post of November 29, 2010 entitled "Harrison's Turbulent Years Spent on the Street Are Yet Another Reason Why Declawing Is Not Only Cruel and Inhumane but Dangerous as Well.")

Others have grown obese as the result of having been sterilized and forced to adapt to a sedentary, indoor lifestyle. Others suffer from diabetes and urinary tract problems as the result of having been fed a steady diet of cheap kibble and other unhealthy foods.

Still others are afflicted with thyroid problems and cancer as the result of their constant exposure to PBDEs, secondhand cigarette smoke, and other toxins. (See Cat Defender posts of August 22, 2007 and October 19, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Indoor Cats Are Dying from Diabetes, Hyperthyroidism, and Various Toxins in the Home" and "Smokers Are Killing Their Cats, Dogs, Birds, and Infants by Continuing to Light Up in Their Presence.")

Even more lethal than conventional collars, implanted microchips have been known to cause cancer. (See Cat Defender posts of September 21, 2007 and November 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "FDA Is Suppressing Research That Shows Implanted Microchips Cause Cancer in Mice, Rats, and Dogs" and "Bulkin Contracts Cancer from an Implanted Microchip and Now It Is Time for Digital Angel and Merck to Answer for Their Crimes in a Court of Law.")

Perhaps worst of all, some of these elderly cats who suddenly wake up one day and find themselves homeless have absolutely no knowledge of the outside world in order to fall back upon because they have been cruelly confined indoors for all of their lives. (See Cat Defender post of February 2, 2015 entitled "Cruelly Denatured and Locked Up Indoors for All of His Life, Nicky Is Suddenly Trust into the Bitter Cold and Snow for Twenty-One Consecutive Days with Predictably Tragic Results.")

In spite of the myriad of difficulties that they face, they are the lucky ones in that they at least have a chance, no matter how slim, of staying alive. The same most definitely cannot be said for those that are deliberately killed off by the collusion of their owners and unscrupulous veterinarians.

Perhaps cruelest of all, these cats never even know what it was that hit them and as the result go to their early graves ignorant to their last breaths of the perfidy that lurked in the owners' malignant hearts. Used, abused, liquidated, and then casually tossed into the trash like yesterday's newspapers is their lot in life.

Of all the animals only man is capable of such deceit, treachery and, above all, ingratitude. He likewise is so craven and dishonest that he concocts outrageous lies, such as either not wanting to see a cat suffer or the old familiar better off dead argument, in order to excuse his heinous crimes.

The disturbing truth of the matter is that the lives of just about all elderly and sick cats could be indefinitely prolonged if only their owners were not too cheap to pony up for their veterinary care and too lazy to attend to their health and age-related needs. (See Cat Defender post of October 18, 2014 entitled "Hamish McHamish's Derelict Owner Reenters His Life after Fourteen Years of Abject Neglect only to Have Him Killed Off after He Contracts a Preeminently Treatable Common Cold.")

The mere fact that so many veterinarians are willing to instantaneously transform their houses of healing into slaughterhouses for the sake of a few pieces of silver is a staggering indictment of both them and their profession. (See Cat Defender post of December 22, 2011 entitled "Rogue TNR Practitioner and Three Unscrupulous Veterinarians Kill at Least Sixty-Two Cats with the Complicity of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals.")

Since practitioners, unlike some shelters, are not compelled by law to disclose their kill rates, it is anybody's guess as to just how many cats meet their Waterloos in this fashion each year. It does not take much intuition to realize however that the death toll surely must be exorbitantly high.

Regardless of whether owners simply abandon their elderly cats to fend for themselves or pay to have them whacked, their treatment of them can only be described as unjust, cruel, and heartless. The proper care of a cat begins with respecting its inalienable right to live out its brief existence to the very last second and then and only then to die a natural death. Included in that is the right to be free from all abuse and exploitation as well as to be provided with shelter, food, and properly understood veterinary care.

Whereas the machinations of the species' sworn enemies, such as ornithologists and wildlife biologists, are legendary, duplicitous owners, moneygrubbing veterinarians, bloodthirsty shelters, and phony-baloney rescue groups actually inflict far greater suffering and carnage on cats. "I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight," former president Warren G. Harding once proclaimed. "But my damn friends, my goddamned friends, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at night."

In a way it is just too bad that cats lack the prerequisite guile in order to anticipate the evil deeds that their owners and others have waiting in store for them. Since that obviously is not the case, it is precisely their innocence and fidelity that makes it all the more imperative that their rights be respected and protected.

Photos: The Plymouth Herald.

Farah

"Telling me there is nothing they can do to investigate, or even address, the horrific way Farah died is just not good enough. Using an air rifle to shoot cats is illegal, and it should be treated as such."
-- Neil Tregarthen

As the wholesale maiming and killing of innocent cats continues unabated, there seemingly is not any power on earth that is capable of prevailing upon either the police or animal protection groups to so much as even investigate these atrocities. The long-standing intransigence of the authorities is, not surprisingly, finally prompting some aggrieved owners and caretakers into taking matters into their own hands as a way of attempting to redress some of these outrageous crimes.

One such dedicated individual with a highly developed sense of right and wrong is wealthy fifty-six-year-old retired businessman Neil Tregarthen of Truro in Cornwall who was forced into acting after the Devon and Cornwall Police (DCP) as well as the RSPCA categorically refused to take seriously the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of a fourteen-month-old black cat named Farah that belonged to his twenty-four-year-old daughter, Aylish. She was shot in the stomach by an unknown assailant armed with an air gun sometime during either the day or evening on September 27th while she was playing in a garden in Exeter, Devon, where Aylish is studying medicine at the University of Exeter.

She discovered Farah's plight the following morning when she came down to breakfast but by then it was way too late to save her life. She was taken to a veterinarian where it was determined that the lead pellet had ruptured her bowels.

She died three days later on the operating table from internal bleeding and septicemia and Aylish and her father were left with a £3,500 veterinary bill, their grief, and a consuming rage at the unfairness of having her taken from them in such a senseless and violent fashion. Not only was Farah's life cruelly and unjustly snuffed out barely after it even had begun, but her last four days on this earth could not possibly have been anything other than excruciatingly painful.

"Aylish was devastated. The vet said it would have been an incredibly distressing and painful death for Farah," Tregarthen confided to The Independent of London on March 5th. (See"Man Spends £10,000 on Private Investigators to Track Down Killers of His Daughter's Kitten (sic).")"Any father would be angry with somebody who upset his daughter, but I am a measured man, and anger doesn't get things changed."

His initial reaction was to naïvely call upon the assistance of the DCP but it did not take long for him to become disabused of any notion that he may have harbored in his breast that he could expect any help from that agency. "The police made it very clear they wouldn't be investigating further," he added to The Independent.

He thus was forced to fall back upon his own not insubstantial resources in order to retain the services of a contingent of private peepers from Focus Investigations in Exeter. The gumshoes devoted six weeks to the matter during which time they interviewed and identified possible suspects, handed out fliers in the neighborhood, and established a telephone number in order to receive tips from the public. The effort wound up costing Tregarthen a cool £10,000 (US$14,841.80).

At the end of it all, the shamuses were able to identify several members of a local gang who not only had criminal records for air gun offenses, but also were so emboldened as to post photographs of themselves injuring animals on Facebook. The investigators were even able to narrow down the list of possible culprits to one individual with what they termed an "obvious sociopathic nature."

In the best tradition of the Philip Marlowes and Sam Spades of yesteryear, the private dicks even went so far as to place the gang under surveillance. "We would camp out on the river pretending to be fishing," Tregarthen revealed to the Daily Mail on March 5th. (See "Who Killed Farah the Kitten (sic)?")"We surveyed certain areas pretending to be members of the public. Ideally we needed to witness an incident, but that never happened."

Neil Tregarthen

They did succeed, however, in locating a witness who claimed to have seen the prime suspect attack another cat with an air rifle. "We found a witness who claimed that he had witnessed our main suspect shooting another cat and who stated that he was willing to give a statement to this effect," Focus informed Tregarthen according to a report by the BBC on March 4th. (See "Man Spends £10K on Search for Kitten (sic) Killer.")

While the peepers were busy identifying possible suspects, Tregarthen put up a £1,000 reward in an effort to entice a member of the public into coming forward with information relating to the crime. "The sad excuse for a human being that did this will have bragged about it," one of his reward posters stated. "If they gobbed off to you, or a mate and you can tell me for sure who it is, you just got the easiest £1,000 in your life."

Although he received many responses to his offer, none of them were the one that he wanted. It was encouraging, however, that none of those who responded did so because of monetary considerations.

"Not one of at least fifty people who phoned asked about the money," Tregarthen revealed to The Independent. "They said: 'This is shocking. Here is what I know'."

Despite the limited amount of success of both his and the investigators' inquiries, he nevertheless was pleased with the effort. "This was no Boy Scout investigation. I was successful in business because I am very demanding of people," he proclaimed to The Independent. "I am ninety-nine point nine per cent sure the key suspect was responsible."

Operating under the mistaken illusion that since he had done their job for them the DCP now would be forced into taking action, Tregarthen summarized Focus's conclusions in a fourteen-age dossier which he then submitted to the force. The representatives of law and order however took one quick look at it and curtly dismissed it.

"I have examined Mr. Tregarthen's report and it is packed with rumor and speculation," DCP Neighborhood Beat Manager Steve Parsons sneered to The Independent. "However, on the back of this local officers did make further inquiries which also turned out to be fruitless."

After having pursued matters as far as he could under the law, Tregarthen had been expecting the police to at least be willing to interrogate the chief suspect but they were unwilling to even indulge him on that point. "But when a job has been eighty per cent done for them, all I want them to do is exercise their right to knock on a suspect's front door and interview him under caution," he explained to The Telegraph on March 5th. (See "Businessman Spends £10K on Private Detectives to Hunt Killer of Daughter's Cat.")"I cannot confront him because it would prejudice the police inquiry."

In spite of Parsons' outrageous balderdash, there can be little doubt that if the victim had been an individual as opposed to a cat that the police not only would have acted but in the process also violated every one of the suspect's civil liberties in order to have made an arrest. That most definitely would have included taking him into custody, subjecting him to endless hours of unrelenting third degree interrogation, illegal searches of both his person and home and, possibly, even torturing him into confessing.

The English would like the world to believe that they are a genteel people who are ruled by the dictates of both law and morality but that is largely a self-serving public relations' ruse. In reality, both their domestic and colonial police forces historically have been comprised of some of the world's most savage and lawless brutes. Their tactics in turn have been handed down like precious heirlooms to their even more ruthless and cutthroat counterparts in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere who not only have embraced them with all the zeal of maniacs but expanded upon their inherent nastiness and cruelties.

Nations, like individuals, do not become rich and powerful by playing by the Golden Rule and it is utter nonsense for anyone to think differently. "Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu' il a été proprement fait," Honoré de Balzac oberved in his 1835 novel, Le Père Goriot.

Just as police forces all over the world are very good at taking decisive action whenever it suits their purposes, they likewise are more than content to do absolutely nothing whenever they can get away with doing so. In the DCP's case, it is quite obvious that its motto, In Auxilium Omnium, does not apply to either cats or their aggrieved owners.

One of Tregarthen's Reward Posters

It additionally is dishonest for Parsons to dismiss the results of Tregarthen's effort as merely rumor and speculation in that just about all police work commences with precisely that. Few if any cases are handed over to them with the guilty parties, facts, and evidence all tied up with a red ribbon in a neat little package; au contraire, it is precisely the job of the police to go out and find all of those elements.

Regrettably, even that process all too often begins and ends with not only rumors and speculation but institutionalized prejudices and the targeting of innocent individuals and cats alike. Acting in their designated roles as the hired guns of the wealthy and the bourgeoisie, they invariably target the lower classes while turning blind eyes to the far greater crimes that are committed by those who pay the greater part of their salaries.

Even the laws themselves are biased in favor of those who have money. "La majestueuse égalité des lois interdit aux riches comme aux pauvres de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans la rue et de voler du pain," is how Anatole France once summed up the grand charade by which all societies live.

In the United States, for example, the police not only gun down cats and dogs in the street but do so with impunity. It therefore goes almost without saying that any group which behaves in such an abhorrently criminal fashion is not about to take cases of animal cruelty seriously. (See Cat Defender post of September 27, 2014 entitled "Falsely Branded as Being Rabid by a Cat-Hater, an Animal Control Officer, and the Gorham Police Department, Clark Is Hounded Down and Blasted with a Shotgun.")

Beyond the ingrained class prejudices and lawlessness that characterizes all police work, it also is a business that begins with the degree mills that offer programs in criminal justice which graduates then parlay into sinecures as cops. Once on the force, the new recruits nakedly exploit their newfound authority by arresting anyone that they can so as to move up the ranks to positions with still ever greater authority and money.

Finally, there is the prison-industrial complex which not only includes houses of detention, guards, and wardens but courts, judges, prosecutors, and lawyers as well. While there can be no denying that all stable societies require law and order, it nevertheless is at times difficult to determine exactly who it is that needs to be locked away and who deserves to be set free. If it were only possible, the best solution of all perhaps would be to lock up the entire human race and then throw away the key.

"After all reasonable areas of inquiry were completed, I spoke to Ms. Tregarthen to explain why no further action would be taken and she was happy with my explanation," Parsons declared to The Independent. Unless he is in the habit of making things up, which is a major problem with all cops, Aylish's joy could not have lasted for very long because she soon was singing an entirely different tune.

"I feel like there is no justification for not investigating something that is illegal," she told the Daily Mail. "But to still have the same response (after Focus's work) is very disappointing."

She also has additional concerns besides obtaining a small measure of justice for Farah. "There is no deterrent to stop people doing it again. No one is being held to account and they are being allowed to continue doing this," she complained to The Telegraph. "I have other cats, but I won't let them out of the house in case this happens again."

Rosie and Her X-Ray

In spite of all of his good work in taking it upon himself to track down Farah's killer at his own expense, Tregarthen nonetheless is off his trolley when he blames the inaction on the part of the police on monetary considerations. "It's also about getting government to understand what chief constables can deliver with the savage cuts they are enduring," he groused to The Independent.

Even the Home Office was quick to disagree with him on that point. "Police reform is working and crime has fallen," one of its representatives told the BBC. "There is no question the police will still have the resources to do their important work, while making their contribution to reducing the deficit."

Just as individuals with only hammers in their toolboxes are prone to viewing all problems that arise as nails, millionaires like Tregarthen tend to erroneously believe that all issues can be solved with money. Human affairs are far more complex than that and thus require considerably more finesse than ever can be provided by either hammers or shekels.

He also was unsuccessful in his attempt to interest the RSPCA in looking into Farah's murder. The charity, which has the authority to initiate prosecutions on its own through independent solicitors, has cited a lack of evidence as the motive behind its decision to remain glued to the sidelines.

Even on those rare occasions when it has prosecuted and won judgments against individuals for abusing cats the culprits invariably have been let off with slaps on the wrists by jurists. Although it is difficult to determine from the limited amount of information contained online if that is the fault of the RSPCA or the courts, it nevertheless is disturbing that the organization all too often seems to be contented with whatever convictions and sentences, no matter how insignificant and lenient, that it is able to obtain.

Also, the organization's long and checkered past of both stealing and killing cats with impunity hardly inspires confidence in its resolve to uphold the animal cruelty statutes. (See Cat Defender posts of June 5, 2007 and October 23, 2010 entitled, respectively, "RSPCA's Unlawful Seizure and Senseless Killing of Mork Leaves His Sister, Mindy, Brokenhearted and His Caretakers Devastated" and "RSPCA Steals and Executes Nightshift Who Was His Elderly Caretaker's Last Surviving Link to Her Dead Husband," plus Daily Mail articles of November 6, 2014 and December 30, 2012 entitled, respectively, "RSPCA Forced to Apologize for Wrongly Putting Down Cat Belonging to Family It Accused of Cruelty in Bungled Prosecution" and "Revealed: RSPCA Destroys Half of the Animals That It Rescues -- Yet Thousands Are Completely Healthy.")

It thus would appear that Tregarthen's efforts to bring Farah's murderer to justice have reached a dead end. The only recourse open to him would be to have the shamuses continue to closely monitor the activities of the suspect in the hope that they eventually will be able to catch him flagrante delicto attacking another cat.

They then could swear out an affidavit to that effect and the police would be forced into arresting him. While they are interrogating him, they also might be able to coax a confession out of him about shooting Farah.

Tregarthen not only has more than enough moola in order to continue the fight but he has, at least in the past, expressed a willingness to devote even more resources to the cause. "I would pay double that (£10,000) if I thought it would stop this sort of behavior," he vowed to the Daily Mail. "I know I am in a fortunate position to be able to do so, but I think it is money well spent. It's about society fighting back."

Roxy and Hayley Fallows

Moreover, he is not merely fighting for Farah and Aylish but rather for cats and their supporters everywhere. "It was for the people whose cats might be shot next -- the elderly widow who might find her lost companion crawling through the cat flap and dying," he told The Independent. "If people who can fight back don't do so, then we are all doomed."

That is all true enough but as things now stand there simply is not any way of getting around the intransigence of both the police and animal protection groups and that rankles him and cat advocates everywhere no end. "Telling me there is nothing they can do to investigate, or even address, the horrific way Farah died is just not good enough," he declared to the BBC. "Using an air rifle to shoot cats is illegal, and it should be treated as such."

If his efforts have accomplished nothing else they have exposed not only how deeply ingrained is the tendency of both the police and animal protection groups to simply wink at cruelty to cats but also how terribly difficult it is going to be in order to substantially change that attitude. It nevertheless is still firmly believed that private dicks have a crucial role to play in the apprehension of cat abusers. Their efforts in this instance went for naught but next time around the outcome might be entirely different.

Not only are assaults perpetrated against cats by thugs and other assorted low-life armed with air guns at epidemic proportions throughout all of the United Kingdom but they have been occurring for a very long time and for that the blame can be squarely laid at the feet of both the police and the RSPCA. For example on March 19, 2007, a ten-year-old brown and white cat named Jacky Boy from Stenhousemuir in Scotland was shot in the face with an air gun and the lead pellet lodged between his jawbone and brain and could not be removed.

Three days later on March 30th a two-year-old black cat named Ebony from Wrexham in Wales lost her right eye to an assailant armed with an air gun. Along about that same time a ten-year-old black cat named Flopsy from Silksworth outside of Sunderland lost his right leg in another air gun assault. (See Cat Defender post of May 7, 2007 entitled "British Punks Are Having a Field Day Maiming Cats with Air Guns but the Peelers Continue to Look the Other Way.")

Later on June 11, 2009, a two-year-old tuxedo named Rosie from the town of Guisborough in Cleveland, North Yorkshire, was shot fifty times with an air gun but amazingly survived. Unfortunately, Clare Turner of Wilton House Veterinary Clinic was able to safely remove only twenty of the pellets and that in turn left Rosie vulnerable to developing lead poisoning from those that were left in her body.

"I've never seen anything like it in my life," her thirty-nine-year-old owner, Tracey Homan, exclaimed to The Telegraph on June 16, 2009. (See "Cat Shot with Fifty Pellets Survives.")"She was covered in blood and dragging her back legs along the floor."

Whereas juvenile delinquents are suspected of committing a lion's share of the air gun attacks that are perpetrated against cats, that is not always the case. On the contrary, elderly gardeners have been caught red-handed doing the same thing.

For example on July 16, 2011, seventy-one-year-old Patrick Doyle of Fields Road in the village of Wootton in Bedford, Bedfordshire, trapped a nameless black cat and then methodically proceeded to shoot it point-blank from a distance of two feet with an air rifle. He doubtlessly would have killed it on the spot if his neighbor, Caroline Benbow-Hunt, had not seen what he was up to and intervened.

Smokey and the Horrific Damage Done to His Face and Left Eye

He subsequently was arrested and tried in Bedford Magistrates' Court on February 29, 2012 but was let off with paying court costs of £1,311.64. Nevertheless, Dave Braybroke, who prosecuted the case for the RSPCA, said afterwards that he was "satisfied" with the light tap on the wrists meted out to Doyle.

Benbow-Hunt released the cat and it never was seen again in the neighborhood and therefore is presumed to have died from its injuries. (See Cat Defender post of March 13, 2012 entitled "The Sick Wife Defense Works Like a Charm for Cunning Patrick Doyle after He Traps a Cat and then Shoots It with an Air Rifle while Still in Its Cage.")

Another cat-hating gardener is suspected in a pair of air rifle attacks on cats that occurred last summer on Bennett's Road in Lower Swainswick, five kilometers northeast of Bath in Somerset. In the first attack, Hayley Fallows ' one-year-old brown cat Roxy had one of her femurs shattered when she was shot at close range.

Mark Minkler of Beaufort Surgery only added to her misery when he incorrectly inserted a pin which later moved and went through her sciatic nerve. That in turn necessitated that she had to undergo a second operation in order to have a plate inserted. More than two months later Roxy was still limping around in discomfort.

Later in September, an eleven-year-old tom named Max owned by Fallows's neighbor, Sue Lewis, was shot with a lead pellet that went through both of his legs. Although he did not suffer any broken bones, he did sustain nerve damage and was left paralyzed in one paw.

"We are worried to think someone who is quite close to us could do something like this," Fallows told the Bath Chronicle on October 14th. (See "Fears Disgruntled Gardener Is to Blame for Air Rifle Attack (sic) on Cats.")"For it to have happened twice, it can't be an accident, it must be on purpose. It is malicious. It has been really upsetting for all of us, especially the children."

Lewis could not have agreed more. "One cat might be an accident but two is more sinister," she added to the Bath Chronicle. "You do worry about the kids being out."

Predictably, the only response that Fallows and Lewis were able to get out of the police were the usual unproductive house-to-house inquiries and letters sent to residents begging them to do their jobs for them. "We have no evidence who is responsible, and we're appealing to anyone with information, or who knows someone who owns a high-powered rifle or similar weapon, to contact us," PC Martin Holliwell lamely blowed to the Bath Chronicle.

Ornithologists, both amateurs and professionals, are yet still another utterly despicable lot of lawless ailurophobes who purchase air guns with the sole purpose in mind of killing and maiming cats. For instance, that is precisely what sixty-eight-year-old Eric Reeves of Bradenham Hall Cottages in Bradenham, Norfolk, did on August 8, 2011 when he shot and killed Nicholas Townley's five-month-old brown and white cat Hartley.

Even After a Shave the Pellet Holes Are Still Visible in Lovey's Body

When his case came to trial on October 26, 2011 in King's Lynn Magistrates' Court, Reeves escaped with one-hundred hours of community service and a measly £400 in court costs. As was the case with its wet noodle prosecution of Doyle, the feckless RSPCA once again was pleased as punch with the outcome.

"This sends out a clear message that it is unacceptable to go around shooting animals," Dave Padmore, who tried the case for the charity, crowed in the face of all logic and truth. "The RSPCA will continue to investigate incidents of this nature and where possible will always seek to bring a prosecution."

His empty rhetoric surely must ring awfully hollow to Tregarthen and all other individuals who have had cats killed and maimed by cretins armed with air guns. (See Cat Defender post of March 9, 2012 entitled "Amateur Ornithologist Guns Down Hartley with an Air Rifle, Feigns Remorse, and Then Cheats Justice by Begging and Lying.")

Far from being a problem that is confined to the English Isles, air guns are being trained on cats just about everywhere. For example, a nine-year-old part-Persian brown and white tom named Smokey from the small town of Maryborough in Victoria was abducted in September of 2009, restrained in some unknown fashion, and then shot thirteen times in the face and head by an attacker wielding an air gun.

A veterinarian was able to successfully remove all of the pellets except for two that had lodged in his face. His left eye was so badly damaged, however, that the veterinarian was forced into stitching a button to his eyebrow in a desperate attempt to save it.

"I was just shocked someone could take an animal and literally hold them (sic) down and just keep shooting them (sic)," owner Liz Dunn told the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) on September 22nd of that year. (See "Owners Horrified after Cat Shot Thirteen Times.")"The police said that they have to keep reloading the slug gun, it's not a process that automatically goes bang, bang, bang. Smokey had been either contained or held because all of them were in his head and nowhere else in his body was injured."

It fell by default to Dr. Hugh Wirth of the Australian RSPCA, however, to give voice to a few enlightening thoughts that should have been uttered a very long time ago. "Jail is the only way to teach people a lesson," he vowed to the ABC. "Almost certainly these will be young males around the age of eighteen to twenty who have done this; it's a pattern that we see throughout Australia and there's only one way to deal with it and that's jail."

He additionally had the courage to call out not only male cat-hating brutes but ornithologists and wildlife biologists as well. "One of the biggest problems we've got here is firstly the Australian male who believes that cats are of a feminine character," he added to the ABC. "The second problem is that conservationists have condemned the cat as the big killer of native wildlife."

In regard to his first keen observation, there cannot be any denying that the life-giving, nurturing, and civilizing attributes commonly associated with women always have been at odds with the bloodthirsty, degenerative, and destructive tendencies of their male counterparts. The Greek dramatist Aristophanes even wrote a play, Lysistrata, about that eternal struggle some twenty-four-hundred-years ago.

During the Middle Ages, the world's oldest, sleaziest, and most morally repugnant institution, the Roman Catholic Church, even waged an all-out war against anchoresses and their cats by branding the former as witches and the latter as their familiars. Even today kindhearted women who go out of their way in order to care for homeless cats are not only universally derided as "crazy cat women" but sometimes even physically threatened and arrested. (See Cat Defender posts of August 2, 2010 and February 26, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Old, Poor, and Sickly Jeanne Ambler Is Facing Eviction for Feeding a Trio of Hungry Cats" and "Charged with Feeding a Feral Cat Named Fluffy, Retired Ohio English Teacher Beats the Rap," plus the Toronto Star, October 20, 2014, "Helping Feral Cats Shouldn't Be Risky Business.")

To put the entire sorry business into a neat little nutshell, male-dominated societies all over the world look down their crooked schnozzles at compassionate women while simultaneously championing the cause of cowardly thugs who get their perverted jollies by taking potshots at innocent cats with air guns. If, on the other hand, someone were to ram the barrel of one of these infernal devices into one of their eye sockets and threaten to pull the trigger they, one to a man, would cry like little babies and beg to be allowed to retain their precious eyesight.

Lovey's Torture Cell and Would-Be Tomb

As far as Wirth's second insight is concerned, cats in Australia are far from being the only ones to find themselves in the crosshairs of dishonest conservationists with perverted agendas. In the United States, for instance, it is precisely the National Audubon Society, the American Bird Conservancy, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, The Wildlife Society, the universities, and PETA who through their unceasing defamations and repeated calls for en masse eradications that have not only supplied the motivation but a justification as well for their partisans and others to take the law into their own hands by abusing and killing cats. (See Cat Defender posts of May 18, 2013, July 18, 2011, and October 7, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Ted Williams and the National Audubon Society Issue a Call for Cats to Be Poisoned with Tylenol® and Then Try to Lie Out of It,""Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Killed," and "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag about Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

Like the English press, newspapers in Deutschland are replete with accounts of cats being attacked by assailants armed with air guns. For instance in August of last year, an unidentified cat owned by Norman Lutterbach from the borough of Schmidt in Nideggen, Nordrhein Westfalen, was attacked twice within the span of three days with the last assault claiming its life. (See the Aachener-Zeitung, August 11, 2014, "Mit Luftgewehr gezielt auf Katze geschossen.")

Later on August 29th, a nine-year-old white cat named Cindy was shot and killed by an attacker with an air rifle while she was reclining on a terrace in the Himbergen section of Uelzen, Niedersachsen. In spite of all of that, she still might have pulled through if the wound to her abdomen had not been initially misdiagnosed by an obviously totally incompetent veterinarian as a bite wound.

As things eventually turned out, she died on the operating table from lead poisoning on September 2nd. (See the Allgemeine Zeitung Uelzen, September 6, 2014, "Tödlicher Schuss auf Cindy.")

In the United States the capitalist media seldom even bother to report air guns attacks upon cats and that makes it somewhat difficult to gauge the extent of the problem; nevertheless,  it is likely that the number of such instances dwarfs those reported in Deutschland, Angleterre, and Australia combined. That also is another poignant example of just how poorly Americans are served by their disreputable newspapers, radio stations, and television channels.

In the one recently known case that garnered nationwide attention, a caged black and white cat named Lovey was pulled out of McKay Bay in the Ybor City section of Tampa on September 1, 2010 by a Good Samaritan. Rushed to Brandon Veterinary Specialists, it was determined that she had been shot at least thirty times in the abdomen and chest with an air rifle. There is not any known connection, but it is just possible that this case furnished both the inspiration and modus operandi for Doyle's devilry.

Lovey shortly thereafter was needlessly divested of most of her fur in a prelude to undergoing emergency surgery even though the veterinarians ultimately decided against removing the lead pellets. She, thankfully, pulled through and was adopted a few weeks later.

The pet carrier in which she was found provided the authorities not only with a pretty good idea of what she had been put through but also several clues as to the identity of her abusers. Specifically, stenciled to the outside of it were the following words: "Kitty Penitentiary,""Est. 2010,""Cell 666,""Jailer Missy," and "Warden" with the name obliterated.

A running tally of at least twenty assaults also was maintained on the outside of the cage. Clearly, Lovey had been tortured over an extended period of time by a pair of devil worshipers.

On September 16th, nineteen-year-old Giovanni Estrada of 10266 Parsons Street in Town 'n' Country, eight kilometers northeast of Tampa, was arrested and charged with two counts of felony animal cruelty. His twenty-six-year-old girlfriend, Mildred Marie "Missy" Krack, who actually owned the cat that she called Mittens, inexplicably was not indicted although she later was banned for life from owning another animal in Hillsborough County. (See The Tampa Tribune, October 13, 2010, "Ex-Owner of Tortured Cat Banned from Owning Animals.")

Pumkin

In return for his despicable crimes, Estrada was let off in February of 2011 with only one year behind bars. (See "WFTS-TV of Tampa, February 23, 2011, "Tampa Man Sentenced to One Year in 'Kitty Penitentiary' Case.")

On his MyPlace web site entitled "In the Shadow of Death," he claimed to be a wiccan who would like to meet Jesus Christ so that he could "kick his ass."(See Cat Defender post of September 28, 2010 entitled "Caged, Shot Thirty Times with an Air Gun, and Then Tossed into the Bay to Drown, Lovey Is Rescued in the Middle of the Night by a Good Samaritan.")

The pattern revealed by this review of the cases points to the inescapable conclusion that it is precisely young males, gardeners, ornithologists, and devil worshipers who are attacking cats with air guns. There possibly could be other groups as well but that does not materially alter the salient fact that these despicable weapons are owned and used by a rather small subset of the general population.

Decent individuals do not own air guns and, moreover, they certainly have better things to do with their lives than to go around shooting defenseless cats and other small animals. Also, just about all of these attacks are localized. Taken altogether, it is safe to conclude that identifying and arresting at least some of these scumbags is nowhere nearly the impossible task that both the police and animal protection groups claim.

Furthermore, these weapons cannot be used against individuals without engendering serious legal consequences and it is highly doubtful that they are acquired merely for target practice. They therefore are manufactured and sold with the explicit purpose of maiming and killing cats, birds, wildlife and, sometimes, farm animals. (See Cat Defender post of January 9, 2006 entitled "Dodemus, a Sparrow Mercilessly Gunned Down by Domino Stackers, to Be Exhibited at Rotterham Museum.")

It accordingly is nothing short of stupefying that any halfway decent society would even allow their manufacture, sale, and ownership, let alone their use against cats. Just the mere possession of one of these diabolical weapons should be sufficient in order to land both adults and juveniles in jail for at least ten years without the benefit of either early parole or time off for good behavior.

In its recently introduced "Manifesto for Cats," the charity Cats Protection of Haywards Heath in Sussex called for stricter regulation of air guns but that hardly goes far enough in that nothing short of an outright ban will suffice. (See The Independent, January 15, 2015, "A 'Manifesto for Cats': Cat Charity to Launch Its Ten-Point Proposal at the House of Commons.")

The sad truth of the matter is that it is open season on cats everywhere and it does not make much difference whether the weapon of choice is an air gun or some other device. Cops and rescue groups can be counted upon for little more than hot air and disgraceful attempts to flimflam the public out of money while doing absolutely nothing to either protect cats or to put their attackers in jail where they belong.

With that being the way that things are, the onus of protecting cats falls squarely upon the shoulders of their owners and the caretakers of TNR colonies. In Farah's case, it appears that Aylish let her down by failing to check on her before retiring for the evening on September 27th. If she had done so, Farah conceivably might still be alive today.

Farah Will Be Forever Fourteen Months Old

It is unclear if she was aware beforehand that yobs in her neighborhood in Exeter have a history of gunning down cats with air guns and that makes it difficult to say if she knowingly placed Farah's life in jeopardy. Although these types of assaults tend to be isolated and sporadic, they nonetheless are crimes of opportunity and for that reason owners need to be constantly on their guard.

As difficult and disconcerting as Tregarthen's efforts have proven to be, apprehending cat abusers is only the initial step in a long-drawn-out judicial process that most often culminates with neither the victim nor their aggrieved owners receiving so much as a smidgen of justice. For instance, not many prosecutors have any genuine interest in trying animal cruelty cases and even those that do, such as the RSPCA, are notorious for turning in lackluster performances whereby they merely go through the motions.

Secondly, judges seldom convict and even on those rare occasions when they do they allow the guilty parties to escape with minuscule fines and probation. Jury verdicts likewise are difficult to obtain in that all the defense has to do is to impanel either one ornithologist, wildlife biologist, or gardener in order to subvert justice. (See Cat Defender post of November 20, 2007 entitled "Bird Lovers All Over the World Rejoice as Serial Killer James M. Stevenson Is Rewarded by a Galveston Court for Gunning Down Hundreds of Cats.")

Civil suits directed at cat abusers are perhaps the best option for aggrieved owners and caretakers. Although Andreas O. did not not receive so much as a scintilla of satisfaction in criminal court, a civil court in München awarded him €500 in damages and issued a cease and desist order against his neighbor, Ernst Bernhard K., who had tortured one of his cats, Rocco, to death and likely would have sooner or later attacked his other resident felines as well. (See Cat Defender posts of January 19, 2011, August 8, 2011, and August 17, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Bird Lover in München Illegally Traps Rocco and Then Methodically Tortures Him to Death with Water and Pepper Spray over an Eleven-Day Period,""Ernst K.'s Trial for Kidnapping, Torturing, and Murdering Rocco Nears Its Climax in a München Courtroom," and "Ernst K. Walks Away Smelling Like a Rose as Both the Prosecutor and Judge Turn His Trial for Killing Rocco into a Lovefest for a Sadistic Cat Killer.")

A civil court in southern California likewise awarded Janien Bubien from the San Diego suburb of Vista $2,500 in damages plus an additional $5,000 in order to relocate elsewhere after her next-door neighbor, forty-seven-year-old Robert Eugene Brunner, killed her three-year-old orange-colored cat Bill with arrows to the neck and back on April 11, 2006. Even more extraordinary, when his case finally came to trial on September 17, 2007 a criminal court judge sentenced him to three years in jail.

Although Brunner was arrested shortly after he murdered Bill, the civil court verdict against him, like the one Andreas O. obtained against Ernst Bernhard K., predated his criminal court conviction and thus reaffirmed the precedent that having the latter is not a prerequisite for obtaining the former. (See Cat Defender posts of August 14, 2007 and September 28, 2007 entitled, respectively, "Grieving Owner Seeks Justice for Orange Tabby Named Bill That Was Hunted Down and Savagely Killed with a Bow and Arrow" and "California Man Who Slew His Neighbor's Cat with a Bow and Arrow Is Sentenced to Three Years in Jail.")

Whereas it is always better to have a criminal conviction on record before turning to the civil courts for redress, even that is not always necessary and, accordingly, it is something that Tregarthen might want to consider as he goes forward. For instance, Kevin Kimes of Brentwood in northern California sued his neighbors, Joseph and Charles Grosser, for seriously injuring his cat, Pumkin, in October of 2005 with an air gun.

Although it is not known how he ultimately fared in court, no one can question Kimes' resolve. "The people that perpetrate these crimes against domesticated animals are going to have to pay," he swore to the San Francisco Chronicle on June 1, 2011. (See "Brentwood Man Cleared to Sue over Cat's Shooting.")"Maybe over time, people will start to think twice."

It is a crying shame that there are not more owners who feel the same way that he and Tregarthen do because that is the only way that the legal status of cats is ever going to be upgraded. It additionally is always important to remember that in his Devil's Dictionary Ambrose Bierce famously defined a non-combatant as a "dead Quaker." C'est-à-dire, turning the other cheek never has worked and never will, at least not in a world so chock-full of killers and other assorted low-life and scumbags.

Photos: BBC (Farah), Daily Mail (Tregarthen and reward poster), The Telegraph and the North News of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Rosie), the Bath Chronicle (Roxy and Fallows), the Australian Broadcasting Company (Smokey), Katy Kuehner of The Tampa Tribune (Lovey), Hillsborough County Animal Services (kitty penitentiary), and Kevin Kimes (Pumkin).

Nelson

"I am heartbroken. I miss him very much, as do Dave and my mam and dad. The house and garden seem so empty without him. Even our other cat Minnie seems to be looking around for him."
-- Andrea Huntley-Crow

Philosophers and laymen alike have long mused about the meaning of life without coming to much of an agreement on anything. Most of them would agree, however, that it is above all fleeting and with its happy moments being in extremely short supply.

The life and times of a brown-colored tom with black stripes and yellow eyes named Nelson certainly bears out that somber assessment of things. Following a lifetime of deprivations and unspeakable abuse, he was crowned as Cats Protection's Cat of the Year last August at the ripe old age of twenty but the good times did not last very long because by January of this year he was in his grave.

Not much is known about where he came from other than that he was born either in or nearby Seaham Harbor, County Durham, in 1994. As it so often is the case, his owner wanted no part of either him or his littermates and as a consequence tied them up in a sack and then tossed them into the North Sea to drown.

His life surely would have ended then and there if an unidentified fisherman had not intervened by plucking the sack out of the waves. Even then only Nelson and one of his brothers survived; the remainder of his siblings perished.

The fisherman had the survivors treated and sterilized by a veterinarian but that appears to have been the outer limit of his compassion. He was in fact so dead set against becoming emotionally involved with either of them that he did not even name them.

Sometime later Nelson's brother lost his tail to either violence or disease before mysteriously disappearing altogether without leaving behind so much as a trace. Although the fisherman continued to allow Nelson to stay in his tiny cabin and, presumably, occasionally fed him, his brother's demise left him pretty much all alone in an extremely hostile and forbidding environment.

Of all of his guardian's gross derelictions of duty none was more glaring than his abject failure to take any concrete measures in order to ensure his safety and that in turn left Nelson vulnerable to unprovoked attacks from both yobs and dogs. Although it is by no means clear, it is believed by some that rocks hurled at him by the former is what cost him the services of his right eye.

A far more plausible scenario is that he was victimized by a punk armed with an air gun. (See Cat Defender posts of May 7, 2007 and April 2, 2015 entitled, respectively, "British Punks Are Having a Field Day Maiming Cats with Air Guns but the Peelers Continue to Look the Other Way" and "Cornishman Shells Out £10,000 on Private Peepers in Order to Track Down Farah's Killer but Once Again Gets Stiffed by Both the Police and the RSPCA.")

The elements were an additional burden that he was forced to bear in that winters in northern England are both cold and wet. Under such trying conditions, there is not any way that he possibly could have been anything other than utterly miserable during those prolonged periods that he was forced to spend outdoors.

Against all odds, he persevered for fifteen long, lonely years on the docks until 2009 when a major construction project that was destined to transform the forlorn harbor into a bustling marina forced him to look elsewhere for a place to live out his twilight years. Like manna from heaven, that was when Andrea Huntley-Crow and her husband Dave from the tiny village of Seaton, eight kilometers south of Seaham, belatedly decided to put an end once and for all to his life of unrelenting misery by adopting him.

Nelson All Alone on the Dangerous Docks of Seaham Harbor

"We used to visit the harbor and the fisherman would tell us about his tough life," she recalled in an August 7th press release from Cats Protection. (See "Plucky Puss Nelson Named National Cat of the Year 2014!")"He had some shelter in the fisherman's cabin, but certainly none of the comforts of a home. To do that for fifteen years is quite something, and we're just pleased he now finally has the warm, loving home he deserves."

Because of his bravery in standing up to both the dogs and the yobs as well as his missing eye, she named him in honor of the much celebrated one-eyed Admiral Horatio Nelson who gave his life defeating the French and Spanish armada at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. From all outward indications, the marriage between him and the Huntley-Crows was one that enjoyed the blessings of The Fates.

"We work away a lot so my mum and dad come and look after him when we're away," she confided to Your Cat Magazine of Grantham in Lincolnshire on February 12th. (See "My Cat's a Survivor!")"He's lovely with us -- so affectionate and playful, but he's really nervous around strangers, probably because of how badly he was treated before."

Right up until near the end he was still able to run up and down the stairs as well as to catch an occasional mouse. "Luckily, he doesn't kill them most of the time so we can release them back outside to fight another day," she added to Your Cat.

Another telling sign of his contentment was to be found in his unwillingness to stray from the Huntley-Crows' garden. He also likely had seen and experienced firsthand more than enough of what the cruel and violent outside world has to offer defenseless, peace-loving cats like himself.

More than likely Nelson would have lived out his remaining days in obscurity with the Huntley-Crows if it had not been for a casual suggestion put forward by an unidentified member of his veterinary team. Acting upon that suggestion, Huntley-Crow decided to enter him in Cats Protection's annual awards and he, not surprisingly, prevailed in the Most Incredible Cat Story category.

His selection was made by celebrity judge Paul Copley who is perhaps best known on this side of the Atlantic for his portrayal of Mr. Mason on the popular English television show, Downton Abbey. "To survive all that he has and still be able to trust humans is quite something," he, a cat lover himself, told Cats Protection in the press release cited supra.

Although Huntley-Crow had felt all along that Nelson had a good chance of winning in his own category, she was somewhat surprised when he took home the top honor as Cat of the Year in ceremonies held August 7th at The Savoy in London. "We're over the moon!" she told Your Cat.

The final selection was made by a celebrity panel comprised of model Lucy Pinder, actress Lesley Joseph, and newsreader and television presenter Jan Leeming. For his trouble and bother, Nelson received two trophies and a three months' supply of Purina cat food.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Nestlé Purina Petcare, which sponsored the contest, had revenues of US$11.2 billion in 2013 and most assuredly could have easily afforded to foot Nelson's nutritional and veterinary bills for the remainder of his life without ever feeling so much as a twinge of financial distress. The niggardliness of miserable capitalists like Purina is nothing short of breathtaking and Cats Protection does not come off smelling any the sweeter by associating with such a rotter.

Nelson's Brief Moment in the Sun with Andrea and Dave Huntley-Crow

If Nelson's newfound celebrity status accomplished nothing else it gave the world an opportunity to not only get to know him but also to learn about how long he had suffered and persevered in obscurity. His experiences also serve as a poignant reminder that for every cat like him who ends up rising to international prominence there are millions of others whose unbearable suffering and premature deaths never see the light of day.

Tragically, even Nelson's own deliverance and fame came way too late in order to do him much good. That is because in January of last year he was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor on his brave and noble little heart. His appetite decreased and his chest had to be drained every few days.

At that point it certainly looked like it was curtains for him until his unidentified veterinarian hit upon the last-ditch expedient of placing him on Metacam® (Meloxicam) which is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) manufactured specifically for dogs suffering from arthritis by Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica of Ingelheim am Rhein in Rhineland-Palatinate. In the United States, for example, the Federal Drug Administration has refused to sanction its oral use in cats under any circumstances. Even in its injectable form it may be legally prescribed only once in order to help alleviate post-operative pain and inflammation.

That is because its repeated use, either orally or subcutaneously, has been known to cause renal failure and death. That is so much the case that a web site, www.metacamkills.com, has been established and its pages are chock-full of tearful testimonies from dozens of owners whose cats have been felled by the drug.

It is unclear if Huntley-Crow was either aware of the dangers of administering Metacam® to Nelson or, even if she had been, it would have mattered very much to her. Once all conventional remedies have been exhausted some individuals will try just about anything in order to prolong not only their cat's life but their own as well. In the latter case some individuals even have been known to resort to, inter alia, eating dirt and tossing off piss once they were down to their last gasps.

In Nelson's case, however, Huntley-Crow was able to catch lightning in a bottle because the drug, which has the added benefit of being able to shrink tumors, worked like magic. "Within days you could tell it was working," she told Your Cat. "He started to eat again and put weight on, and the time between him needing to have his chest drained increased more and more."

So astonishing was his turnaround that not only did his breathing substantially improve, but his veterinarian was able to reduce the frequency of his office visits to once every three months. "He's doing really well," his guardian added.

As the cynics are overly fond of reminding everyone, nothing good ever lasts and that, sadly, ultimately held true in Nelson's life and death battle with cancer. "He kept bouncing back and fighting it, doing his little miracle thing and amazing everyone with his zest for life," Huntley-Crow told Your Cat Magazine on February 24th. (See "Tribute to Cat of the Year Nelson.")"He started to slow down around early January and we were feeding him in his bed and carrying him down to the door for him to enjoy the air and have a stroll around the garden."

She has been anything but candid about what transpired next. "He was comfortable and happy until the end," was all that she was willing to disclose to Your Cat.

That could mean almost anything but, given that individuals who reside in nominally Christian countries have a thoroughly morally repugnant tendency of killing off their cats shortly after the holidays, she in all probability paid Nelson's veterinarian to snuff out his life. (See Cat Defender posts of January 15, 2015 and October 18, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Lewis, Ann Arbor's Much Celebrated Garden Shop Cat, Departs This World Under Highly Suspicious Circumstances" and "Hamish McHamish's Derelict Owner Reenters His Life after Fourteen Years of Abject Neglect only to Have Him Killed Off after He Contracts a Preeminently Treatable Common Cold.")

Nelson at Home with Andrea Huntley-Crow

Additionally, since she also has categorically refused to disclose precisely what it was that ultimately claimed his life, it is impossible to speculate upon what, if any, role that Metacam® may have played in his death. Even if it did ultimately doom him, without it he likely would have died a year earlier and as a result he never would have been named Cat of the Year.

"I am heartbroken. I miss him very much, as do Dave and my mam and dad," she confided to Your Cat in the February 24th article cited supra. "The house and garden seem so empty without him. Even our other cat Minnie seems to be looking around for him."

Looking back over the course of Nelson's life it is painfully obvious not only how trying his first fifteen years must have been but, equally important, just how miserably he was treated by everyone who either walked in or out of his world. First of all, there is his original owner who not only got away scot-free with killing the majority of his littermates but who likely has gone on to liquidate, in one form or another, untold numbers of additional cats as well.

Secondly, the fisherman did a simply atrocious job of protecting him from the machinations of both dogs and yobs. Even the shelter, food, and veterinary care that he did provide him with was hardly adequate.

Animal protection groups, such as the RSPCA, did absolutely nothing in order to either provide for his well-being or to bring to justice those who so horribly abused him. In the end perhaps that was best because if they had intervened on his behalf they likely would have done so only in order to have initialed his death warrant on the spot. When abject neglect is the very best that cats can expect from those groups charged with safeguarding their lives it is high time that their supporters looked elsewhere for their deliverance.

Even Huntley-Crow and her family have a considerable amount on their consciences. By her own admission, for example, not only had she and her parents known about Nelson's desperate plight for years but yet they did little or nothing in order to relieve it until 2009.

She thus knowingly allowed him to go on suffering and to continue to be abused when she all along had it in her power to have rescued him. In that respect she is indeed fortunate that he was not killed long before she finally got around to making up her mind to help him.

Nelson now lies buried in her garden but his trophies are still on display alongside a photograph of him in her conservatory. He also lives on in videos and, most enduringly, in her heart and memories.

"He was our little hero, a real little character and so affectionate and loving," she confessed to Your Cat on February 24th. "We just have to remember how happy he was with us for over five years, what a lovely life he had and how much we loved him."

That leads to the thought provoking question of whether it is possible for love to transcend the grave. An Italian cat named Toldo most assuredly continued to care deeply for his beloved guardian even long after he was gone. (See Cat Defender post of March 28, 2013 entitled "Even the Finality of the Grave Fails to Diminish Toldo's Abiding Love and Devotion to His Long Dead Guardian.")

Nelson in His Beloved Garden Alongside His Trophies

With humans on the other hand that type of devotion is considerably rarer, especially when it comes to the amount of tears that they are willing to shed over a deceased cat. There are many reasons for that callousness but chiefly among them is that with the passage of time memories tend to fade and guardians, sooner or later, come to forget all about their once cherished companions.

Plus, modern-day life is extremely hectic and demanding and that in turn serves only to fuel the fires of man's inherent selfishness and forgetfulness. On top of all of that, aggrieved owners usually wind up acquiring new cats who have their own needs and demands that must be satisfied.

Perhaps Jonathan Hull came the closest to the truth when he suggested in his 2001 novel, Losing Julia, that men are little more than "overly sensitive fertilizer." Even if he should be correct in that summation, that only serves to enhance, rather than to diminish, the intrinsic value of this life and this world.

That is especially the case where cats are concerned in that they, first of all, live such terribly short lives. Secondly, the unconditional, no strings attached love, support, and loyalty that they so freely dispense at the drop of a hat are about the only constants that an individual can bank on in an ever-changing, topsy-turvy world.

If all of that were not sufficient, there are substantial psychological and physical health benefits to be derived from living with a cat. An individual can be a good for nothing, penniless bum in the prying and censorious eyes of the world and yet be a knight in shining armor to a forgotten cat. No experience is required and the out-of-pocket expenses, in most cases, are minimal.

In what other undertaking that life has to offer can one receive so much in return for such a minuscule investment? Once they are gone, however, it is for ever and there are not going to be any joyous reunions in the sweet-by-and-by.

Intelligent and caring individuals therefore have the bon sens to treasure them while they are here. "We have only a little time to please the living but all eternity to love the dead," Sophocles pointed out in Antigone.

Novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe issued another valuable rationale for not discounting the present. "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone," she once astutely observed.

Contrary to what Huntley-Crow insinuates, there simply is not any conceivable way that the last five happy years that Nelson spent on this earth ever could make up for the fifteen miserable ones that preceded them. That is because life is simply too short to squander three-quarters of it as society's punching bag.

Secondly, the assumed role that suffering and overcoming hardships plays in building character is not only grossly overrated in the human world but an utter absurdity as far as cats like Nelson are concerned. Besides, wallowing in the glorification of pain and abuse is for sadists and other mean-spirited and highly competitive individuals, such as most Americans.

Since late is significantly better than never at all, it is wonderful that Nelson's long overdue ship finally came in, even if it did not dock until he was in his twilight years. He did not need to be put through fifteen years of unrelenting hell however in order to enjoy at a few shining moments in the sun; rather, he deserved far better than that starting from day one of his life and therein lies the tragedy.

It is now way too late to put the sand back into the hourglass. As Nelson was forced to learn firsthand at any early age, most individuals in this world play for keeps and mulligans are largely reserved for the golfing links.

Photos: Moggies (Nelson), Express and SWNS (Nelson on the docks and with Andrea Huntley-Crow), Mirror (Nelson with Andrea and Dave), and Your Cat (Nelson in the garden).

Freya

"...she also likes to spend time in the bar. On many an evening she can be found in Westminster's favored political watering hole, the Red Lion, despite having to cross four lanes of traffic to get there. Apparently at the end of the evening the barmaids regularly have to carry her back home."
-- Oliver Wright of The Independent

Freya, the resident feline of Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had an especially close call on the evening of August 7th when she was struck by a motorist outside of her residence at the world famous 10 Downing Street. The details are pretty sketchy but she apparently was attempting to cross perilous Whitehall Road when she was mowed down.

According to the August 8th edition of the Daily Mail, she was left "battered and bruised."(See "George Osborne's Cat Freya Being Treated by Vets after Being Run Over Outside Downing Street.")

The August 8th report in The Independent was even bleaker. "Not very well at all," is how it summed up her condition. (See "George Osborne's Cat Freya Recovering at the Vets after Being Hit by Car.")

Fortunately, kindhearted pedestrians came to her rescue and saw to it that she was rushed to a veterinarian. As best it could be determined, the nature and extent of her injuries never have been made public.

Consequently, it is not known either how much trauma she was put through or how long it took her to recuperate. All that can be said is that she certainly looks well enough in a photograph of her that was posted September 16th on the Facebook page of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That of course could be an old snap.

The Chancellor afterwards expressed his gratitude to those who came to Freya's assistance but insisted that he would pay for her treatment out of his own pocket. No information has been released as to the identity of her assailant but it would seem likely that she was the victim of a hit-and-run motorist in that it was passersby that came to her aid.

The good news is that Freya somehow survived and is still gracing the face of the earth. The bad news is that Osborne, his authoress wife, Frances, and their two children, Luke and Liberty, have not publicly announced any preventative measures designed to better protect her fragile life.

Relying upon the general public in order to look after a cat is an extremely dicey proposition as both a nameless two-year-old tuxedo and twenty-seven-year-old dog lover Dylan Cottriall of St. Helens in Merseyside found out firsthand back in July. Emaciated, dehydrated, and near death as the result of an infestation of fleas that were sucking the very life out of her, the cat had keeled over in the gutter alongside a busy highway.

Freya in a September 16th Photo Released by the Foreign Office

Unlike the Londoners who came to Freya's rescue, none of the passing motorists could be bothered with stopping to check on her condition. Even Cottriall at first thought that she likely had been run down and killed by a hit-and-run motorist but, thankfully, he had enough compassion and concern for her in order to pull over and make certain one way or the other.

"I stopped and went over to her to see if she had a collar and it was then I could see she was moving," he related to The Reporter of St. Helens on July 11th. (See "Outrage as Drivers Ignore a Dying Cat.")"She was just a bag of bones and had simply given up. Although she was at death's door she didn't stop purring even though she was too weak to do anything to help herself."

Cottriall then rushed the cat to Paws n Claws where she was provided with the emergency veterinary care that she so desperately needed in order to recuperate and thus to go on living. At last report she was in foster care with Gill Farrar of St. Helens.

Although little or nothing is known about the events that led to her abandonment alongside that busy thoroughfare, it is an entirely different story as far as Freya is concerned. Born in April of 2009, Osborne reportedly purchased her as a present for his children while he and his family were residing in Notting Hill, a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in central London.

She did not stick around for long, however, and instead mysteriously disappeared a few months later. The Osbornes reportedly blanked the tony neighborhood with "Lost Cat" posters but Freya never was located.

They eventually wrote her off as being dead and forgot all about her. The Conservatives later prevailed in the 2010 election and a year later the Osbornes moved into 10 Downing Street when George became chancellor of the Exchequer.

As was the case not only with Mark Twain but Prime Minister John Major's cat, Humphrey as well, the news of Freya's death turned out to be premature. In June of 2012, Frances received the shock of her life when she got a telephone call informing her that Freya not only had been found but, best of all, was alive and well.

The identification was made thanks to implanted microchip after Freya had been brought to a veterinarian for unspecified reasons by an unidentified neighbor of the Osbornes in Notting Hill. As best the story can be pieced together, the neighbor had not seen the posters and, believing her to be a stray, had been feeding her in a garden.

St. Helens' Cat, Cottriall, Gill Farrar, and a Woman Identified Only as Lizzie

Since the neighbor resides only a few streets removed from the Osbornes' dwelling, the only logical conclusion to be drawn from events is that they neither searched very hard nor very long for her. In particular, it is totally inexcusable that they did not personally knock on every door in the neighborhood.

That criticism in no way obviates the myriad of difficulties associated with locating an errant cat. Motorists, dogs and other animals, as well as ailurophobes kill them with impunity and afterwards their corpses are quickly disposed of by either garbagemen or the summertime heat.

Animal Control officers, the RSPCA, and other so-called humane groups steal and exterminate them all the time. Plus, they often become accidentally trapped inside automobiles, boxes, discarded furniture, and other movable objects and as a result wind up hundreds, even thousands, of miles from home.

Many private individuals also rescue homeless cats and then lock them up permanently inside, thus foreclosing any opportunity for them to ever return home. In spite of all those impediments, if a lost cat is still living outdoors on its home turf someone likely has seen it and probably is feeding it.

Although the neighbor in question is to be commended for feeding and providing Freya with veterinary assistance, it is shameful that the individual did not provide her with shelter. Not only are London winters far from being pleasant affairs, but she would have been much safer spending at least part of her time indoors.

After having been successfully reunited with the Osbornes, Freya took up residence with them at 10 Downing Street which, contrary to popular belief, serves as the official residence of the chancellor of the Exchequer. The prime minister and his family reside at the more commodious number 11.

It did not take the intrepid moggy long, however, to put her own indelible paw prints on her job as the number two mouser in Her Majesty's government. That began when the Osbornes, not wanting to lose track of her again, outfitted her with a £50 diamante collar with a tag.

Even that act of bon sens was not without controversy coinciding as it did with the austerity budget that Osborne had foisted upon his fellow citizens. (See the Daily Mail, July 20, 2012, "Feline Flush: Chancellor's Cat Shows Off Her Diamante Collar as She Prowls Downing Street.")

Freya and Her Pricey Collar

Later in October of that year, she became involved in a well-publicized scrap with Prime Minister David Cameron's cat, Larry, on the steps of number 10. One observer even later claimed that she had gotten the better of him. (See The Telegraph, October 16, 2012, "Police Called to Break Up Violent Cat Fight in Downing Street.")

It even has been alleged that she is a far more proficient mouser than Larry. That in turn spawned an erroneous rumor that she even had taken his job. (See the Daily Mail, September 16, 2012, "A Paw Performance! Larry the Downing Street Cat Is Sacked as Number 10's Chief Mouser after Chillaxing (sic) Too Much on the Job.")

One of the numerous limitations associated with implanted microchips is that they neither can be seen nor deciphered with the naked eye; for that, scanners owned almost exclusively by veterinarians and shelters are required. It therefore was fortunate that the Osbornes had equipped Freya with a collar and a tag because in May of this year she did yet still another runner.

On that occasion, she wound up in Vauxhall, more than two kilometers removed from home, and in the borough of Lambeth. Fortunately, she was found by Kate Jones of Thames Reach's London Street Rescue who allowed her to spend the night on her pillow.

Thanks to the information contained in Freya's tag, Jones was able to contact the Osbornes who immediately dispatched a chauffeur-driven limousine in order to collect her. It is unclear from press reports but apparently Freya was AWOL for only one night.

Her deliverance did not come without a political price tag, however, in that Jones took full advantage of the golden opportunity presented to her in order to post not only a photograph of Freya online but to accompany it with a blast at Osborne for his disgraceful neglect of the homeless. Regrettably, there is not any evidence to suggest that the dressing down that he received from her has had any impact upon his policies.

Much more importantly, it is doubtful that he even realizes just how rare it is to locate a lost cat once, let alone twice. "It's wonderful when you read about these reunions, but unfortunately for ninety per cent of lost cats, there is no returning home," Lorie Chortyk of the BCSPCA somberly pointed out to The Province of Vancouver on January 2, 2011. (See "Cats Rarely Come Back.")

The dangers associated with Freya's occasionally getting lost pale in comparison to the menace posed by London motorists. In particular, she is known to be a regular at the Red Lion located at 48 Parliament Street (a  continuation of Whitehall under a different name) and a little less than half a kilometer  removed from home. "...she also likes to spend time in the bar. On many an evening she can be found in Westminster's favored political watering hole, the Red Lion, despite having to cross four lanes of traffic to get there," is how Oliver Wright of The Independent described her perilous trek on June 7, 2013. (See "Lost Pet or Double Agent? Meet Freya, the Roving Tabby of the Treasury.")"Apparently at the end of the evening the barmaids regularly have to carry her back home."

Freya and Larry

Even more astonishing, Osborne is acutely aware of just how much danger he is placing her in through his abject neglect of her. For instance, back in February he publicly acknowledged that she was a regular at the bar. (See YouTube video of February 28, 2014 entitled "Fuller's Red Lion, Westminster, Is Reopened by George Osborne.")

She also has been sighted backstage at the Trafalgar Studio Theatre at 14 Whitehall, also half a kilometer from home but in the opposite direction from the Red Lion. Her roaming around the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Cabinet Office at number 10, and Exchequer do not pose much of a threat to her safety in that they are closely situated together and on the same side of Whitehall.

That is not meant to imply that even Downing Street itself is completely free of dangers as the aforementioned Humphrey discovered back in the 1990's when he came within an eyelash of being run down and killed by a limousine lugging around the ultimate political whore, Bill Clinton. (See Cat Defender post of April 6, 2006 entitled "Humphrey, the Cat from 10 Downing Street Who Once 'Read' His Own Obituary, Passes Away at 18.")

The failure of Old Blighty's political elites to better protect their resident felines is made all the more inexcusable by the petit fait that it would be rather easy and inexpensive for them to create a safe haven around numbers ten and eleven for Freya, Larry, and all future cats to roam. The area already provides enough gardens and public buildings in order to furnish them with plenty of fresh air, sunlight, exercise, and mental stimulation all within a safe and secure environment.

All that is needed would be to extend the height of the fences and walls which surround the compound and to install netting on the top. Aesthetics are not an issue given that Downing Street has been closed to the public since 1989.

An even better solution would be for the authorities to go whole hog and close Whitehall and the City of Westminster to all vehicular traffic. The time has come to remove both murderous motorists and their greenhouse gas emitting noisy machines from the inner cities and to transform those areas into pedestrian malls.

Neither proposal would be too much to ask especially considering how all recent occupants of Downing Street have so nakedly exploited their cats as valuable political props while simultaneously demonstrating little or no regard for their personal safety and well-being. Almost as shameful, no animal protection group in England is willing to so much as even contemplate holding them accountable under the anti-cruelty statutes.

The cold shoulder that Cameron and his minions have shown Larry over the years is a good case in point. Back in 2009 when he was still in the opposition and only daydreaming of political power and glory, Cameron put the kibosh on any notion of there being a resident feline in any new government that was led by him.

Freya at Home

By the time that February of 2011 had rolled around he had changed his tune and had consented to adopt Larry from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in south London. (See Cat Defender post of July 21, 2011 entitled "Larry Faces Many Challenges and Dangers in His New Rôle as 10 Downing Street's Resident Feline.")

It did not take long, however, for Larry to wear out his welcome and for Cameron and his cronies to start belittling and sniping at him at every opportunity behind his back. (See Cat Defender post of November 28, 2011 entitled "Larry Is Persevering as Best He Can Despite Being Constantly Maligned by Both Fleet Street and the Prime Minister's Duplicitous Staff.")

A fork in the road of sorts was reached last year with the publication of Matthew d'Ancona's tome, In It Together. In the tell-all exposé, d'Ancona claims that Cameron does not care for Larry because he has failed to solve the rodent problem plaguing his residence and leaves cat hairs on his expensive suits. The prime minister also apparently does not even like the smell of cat food.

Once news of Cameron's reported antipathy toward Larry became public fodder a "Save Larry" campaign was launched on Twitter and that, at least for the time being, has saved both his job and home. "I can set everyone's mind at rest in the #Save Larry campaign," Cameron tweeted. "He and I get on purr-fectly well. The kids love him too."

Should the Tories fail to prevail in next year's upcoming election, Cameron will no longer need Larry and that very well could end up costing him his home. In that case, he most likely would be either sent back to Battersea or fobbed off on to an obliging staffer.

That is precisely the cruel fate that befell Humphrey. Although both the Iron Lady and Major welcomed him with open-arms, Tony Blair's resident witch, Cherie, could not bear the sight of him.

The miserable old hag, whom the Countess of Wessex once referred to as "horrid, horrid, horrid," first attempted to have him done in and when that ploy was foiled by Fleet Street she had him exiled to the residence of an unidentified staffer. "Humphrey is voting with his paws," a Tory spokesman chimed in on that unhappy occasion. "After eight happy years under a Conservative government he could take only six months of Labor."

He died in obscurity in March of 2006, but never has been forgotten. "He has caught numerous mice and the odd rat," a Cabinet dossier compiled on him and released in 2005 stated. "By a perhaps unfair comparison, Rentokill have been operating for years and have never caught a thing."

Freya Is Given the Bum's Rush by a Foreign Office Flathead

The document went on to famously describe that wonderful feline gentleman as "a workaholic who spends nearly all his time at the office, has no criminal record, does not socialize a great deal or go to many parties and has not been involved in any sex or drug scandals that we know of." (See The Times of London, March 20, 2006, "Political World Mourns a Killer Named Humphrey" and former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe's loving remembrance of him in The Telegraph, January 26, 2011, "A New Cat for Westminster.")

A simply adorable black and white female named Sybil who was owned by Osborne's predecessor, Alistair Darling and his wife, Maggie, was treated even shabbier than Humphrey. Brought down from Edinburgh by the Darlings on September 10, 2007, she initially was given free rein of the grounds and even had her own basket at the Exchequer.

"Sybil has been brought down because there are mice here," Darling declared upon her arrival. "She's a really good mouser." (See Cat Defender post of September 19, 2007 entitled "After a Dreary Ten-Year Absence, Number 10 Downing Street Has a New Resident Feline and Her Name Is Sybil.")

Alas, even that valuable and much sought after talent was not nearly enough in order to save either her job or home because Darling's boss, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, turned out to be a closet cat-hater. Sybil accordingly lasted only six months on the job before she was unceremoniously sacked and cruelly fobbed off on an old acquaintance of the unconscionable Darlings.

Like Humphrey before her, she either died or was deliberately killed off by her new owner on July 27, 2009 while living in obscurity. (See Cat Defender post of August 13, 2009 entitled "Sybil, 10 Downing Street's Former First Feline, Dies Unexpectedly from an Undisclosed Illness.")

"As numerous thinkers have noted, cats often have a soothing quality on their owners," is how The Independent began its July 29th eulogy of her. (See "Feline Friends.")"Granted, the economy is looking as shaky as a newborn kitten at the moment, but imagine what condition it might be in
without Sybil."

The one thing that both Freya and Larry have going for themselves is that they are owned by Tories who are occasionally more favorably disposed toward the species than their counterparts in the Labor Party. Additionally, Osborne appears to genuinely like animals in that in addition to Freya his family has a budgerigar named Gibson, a Bichon Frise named Lola, a hamster, and a pair of goldfish.

The odds therefore are at least even that he will choose to hang on to Freya regardless of what happens next year at the polls. Unless he dramatically mends his irresponsible ways and takes considerably better care of her, however, that is going to be a moot point.

Freya Makes Yet Another Daring Escape

In spite of their myriad of shortcomings and failings as guardians, English prime ministers and chancellors of the Exchequer treat cats slightly more humane than their utterly nauseating American counterparts who care little or nothing about the species, animals in general, and Mother Earth; au contraire, the only things that they care about are sucking up to the rich, lining their pockets, killing people, and telling lies.

For example, George H. Bush's cat, India, was either killed off or died from natural causes shortly before he and his family vacated the White House. (See Cat Defender post of January 24, 2009 entitled "India Dies at Age Eighteen Leaving the White House Without a Resident Feline for
the First Time in Sixteen Years.")

Callous and uncaring Clinton fobbed off Socks on his secretary, Betty Currie, as soon as he no longer had any further need of him. (See Cat Defender posts of December 24, 2008 and March 12, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Former First Cat Socks Is Gravely Ill with Cancer and Other Assorted Maladies" and "Too Cheap and Lazy to Care for Him During His Final Days, Betty Currie Has Socks Killed Off and His Corpse Burned.")

The utterly worthless stooge currently ensconced in the White House not only does not want anything to do with cats but has sat idly by while the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has launched en masse extermination campaigns against them on San Nicolas, the Florida Keys, and elsewhere. He also has sanctioned the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service's unwarranted intrusion into the private lives of Ernest Hemingway's world famous polydactyls in Key West. (See Cat Defender posts of February 24, 2012, June 23, 2011, and January 24, 2013 entitled, respectively, "United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Humane Society Hoist a Glass in Celebration of Their Extermination of the Cats on San Nicolas Island,""Wallowing in Welfare Dollars, Lies, and Prejudice, the Bloodthirsty United States Fish and Wildlife Service Is Again Killing Cats in the Florida Keys," and "The Feds Now Have Cats and Their Owners Exactly Where They Want Them Thanks to an Outrageous Court Ruling Targeting the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.")

All of those atrocities are in addition to the tens of thousands of bobcats, cougars, jaguars, lynxes, ocelots, and other large cats that are being systematically liquidated each year by the USDA's Wildlife Services and other federal agencies. Even more alarming, the fate of both small and big cats alike is not even part of the political discussion; the president and the feds merely assume that they have a divine mandate to do with them as they see fit.

Although politicians are entitled to own cats just like everyone else, they should be required by law to not only take proper care of them but to respect their inalienable right to live. Furthermore, in failing to fulfill their moral and custodial responsibilities to them, they are setting a simply horrible example for their constituents.

An individual can, either wittingly or unwittingly, fail a cat in countless ways but to knowingly allow one to regularly venture out into traffic on a busy, four-lane road constitutes the very epitome of animal cruelty and Osborne accordingly should be held accountable for  his shameful negligence. Unlike with Larry, however, there does not appear to be a "Save Freya" campaign on the horizon and that makes her situation all the more desperate because her precious life is rapidly slipping away like sand through an hourglass.

Photos: The Independent (Freye up close, at home, in the street, and scaling a wall), Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Facebook (Freya beside a statue), The Reporter (St. Helens' cat with her rescuers), Political Pictures (Freya's diamante collar), and The Telegraph (Freya and Larry).

Lady Thor

"She is a very special and beautiful cat. She is like a dog in the way she follows me around, so it is like a death in the family."
-- Hamish Mowatt

Losing a beloved cat is, arguably, the cruelest blow that life has to dish out from its seemingly endless bag of miseries, heartaches, and coups du sort. The almost unbearable pain that accompanies such a devastating loss is only compounded when an aggrieved owner is left in the dark as to what has happened to the cat and that in turn makes achieving any measure of closure totally impossible.

Those no doubt are just a few of the dark and foreboding thoughts that have been the constant companions of Hamish and Carole Mowatt of St. Margaret's Hope on South Ronaldsay ("Ronald's Island" in Old Norse) in the Orkneys ever since their beloved three-year-old cat, Lady Thor, mysteriously disappeared on February 21st from their home at Skerries Bistro near Pentland Firth. Although the elderly restaurateurs are offering a £1,000 reward, even that expedient has failed to lead to her safe return.

Found cowering underneath the Mowatt's automobile on a Thursday when she was barely two months old, the black, gray, and white female with a distinctive patch of brown underneath her chin was, appropriately enough, named in honor of the great god Thor. From that day forward she became an indispensable member of the Mowatt household.

"She is a very special and beautiful cat," Hamish told the Press and Journal of Aberdeen on March 30th. (See "£1,000 Offered for Return of Missing Orkney Cat.") "She is like a dog in the way she follows me around, so it is like a death in the family."

Other than successfully enlisting the aid of the Press and Journal, it is not known what additional efforts the Mowatts have undertaken in order to locate Lady Thor. Presumably, they have thoroughly searched the area around their restaurant and thus concluded that she is no longer residing in St. Margaret's Hope.

Her wariness of strangers coupled with the inherent love of place that all cats share in common also would tend to indicate that if she was removed from the area it was against her will. "She is not a friendly cat with anyone else and won't let anyone come within fifteen feet of her," Hamish affirmed to the Press and Journal.

Unless she has met with foul play, it thus seems likely that she has been either intentionally or accidentally spirited out of St. Margaret's Hope and possibly even off of South Ronaldsay. Given the island's location, two possible destinations immediately present themselves.

First of all, since South Ronaldsay is connected to Mainland Island in the north by the A961 which transverses the Churchill Barriers (a quartet of causeways covering 2.3 kilometers), Lady Thor could have been driven there or dropped off along the way at either Burray, Glimps Holm, or Lamb Holm. In fact, unconfirmed sightings of a cat matching her description have been reported in the Tankerness district of St. Andrews Parish, approximately forty kilometers from St. Margaret's Hope.

The second and even more depressing scenario is that she somehow found her way onto one of Pentland's automobile ferries which sail thrice daily from St. Margaret's Hope to Gills Bay in Caithness on the Scottish mainland to the south. "We believed at one point that she probably went on the midday ferry. We have cars driving down here regularly between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. and that is when she went missing," Hamish theorized to the Press and Journal. "If she has gone to mainland Scotland we fear that we will never see her again."

Because of their diminutive stature and tendency to become easily frightened of both crowds and loud noises, cats often seek sanctuary in movable objects and that quite often leads to disaster. While it is always conceivable that she could have been forcibly kidnapped, a far more likely scenario is that she somehow wandered into a parked car and as a result was unwittingly transported out of the area.

It happens every day and, sadly, only a handful of these unfortunate felines ever are reunited with their owners. (See Cat Defender posts of November 6, 2006, December 12, 2007, August 18, 2008, April 18, 2010, June 1, 2012, and December 11, 2014 entitled, respectively, "Trapped in a Moving Van for Five Days, Texas Cat Named Neo Is Finally Freed in Colorado,""Bored with Conditions at Home, Carlsberg Stows Away on a Beer Lorry for the Adventure of a Lifetime,""Ronaldo Escapes Death after Retailer Coughs Up the Exorbitant Bounty That Quarantine Officials Had Placed on His Head,""Ally's Last Ride Lands Her in a Death Trap Set by an Uncaring and Irresponsible Supermarket Chain and a Bargain Basement Shelter,""A Tattoo Unravels Burli's Secret Past But It Is a Radio Broadcast That Ultimately Leads to His Happy Reunion with His Forever Grateful Current Guardian," and "Uprooted from Home and Left Stranded Thousands of Miles Away, Spice Discovers to Her Horror That Not All the Ghouls and Goblins in This World Are Necessarily to Be Found on Halloween.")

Lady Thor

It often is not even necessary for a cat to gain entry into the interior of an automobile in order to be driven miles from home in that some of them, attracted to the heat given off by cooling motors, become trapped underneath the bonnet. Others meanwhile are forced to hang on for dear life to undercarriages and precarious perches on petrol tanks. (See Cat Defender posts of January 5, 2006 and March 16, 2003 entitled, respectively, "'Miracle' Cat Survives a Seventy-Mile Trip Down the New Jersey Turnpike by Clinging to the Drive Shaft of an SUV" and "Mausi Is Saved from a Potentially Violent Death on the Fast and Furious Autobahn Thanks to the Dramatic Intervention of a Münchner Couple.")

Some cats also make forays into trash cans and Dumpsters and as a result end up at either recycling plants or in worse straits. (See Cat Defender posts of August 23, 2007 and May 4, 2010 entitled, respectively, "An Alert Scrap Metal Worker Discovers a Pretty 'Penny' Hidden in a Mound of Rubble" and "Picked Up by a Garbage Truck Driver and Dumped with the Remainder of the Trash, Alfie Narrowly Escapes Being Recycled.")

Cats even have found themselves in landfills after unwittingly secreting themselves away in furniture that was slated to be discarded. (See Cat Defender post of March 23, 2009 entitled "Mistakenly Tossed Out with the Trash, Autumn Survives a Harrowing Trip to the City Dump in Order to Live Another Day.")

Cats additionally have been accidentally mailed from one location to another. (See Cat Defender post of July 21, 2008 entitled "Janosch Survives Being Sent Through the Post from Bayern to the Rhineland.")

To make a long story short, either anyone or anything that moves in and out a cat's world is a potential death trap. Moreover, disaster can strike within the twinkling of an eye in that a cat can be in plain view one moment and fifty miles away in parts unknown an hour later.

Other than the steps that they already have taken, the Mowatts might want to consider placing some online and print advertisements on both Mainland Island and in Caithness. If they have not already done so, the should blanket both locales with "Lost Cat" posters. Door-to-door canvassing also would be another idea worth trying.

Given that Skerries Bistro reopened for business on March 14th and will continue to do so on a daily basis throughout October, it is not known how much time and energy that they have to invest in searching for Lady Thor but if they love her half as much as they claim they will drop everything immediately and devote all of their time and resources into finding her. During the interim they could prevail upon someone else to fill in for them at the restaurant.

If that is totally out of the question, they always could retain the services of a private dick in order to beat the bushes for them. (See Cat Defender post of April 2, 2015 entitled "Cornishman Shells Out £10,000 on Private Peepers in Order to Track Down Farah's Killer but Once Again Gets Stiffed by Both the Police and the RSPCA.")

Presumably, the couple long ago contacted any and all animal protection groups that exist in St. Margaret's Hope as well as Cats Protection's office in Finston on Mainland Island. They additionally should have alerted the Scottish RSPCA in Caithness to be on the lookout for Lady Thor.

It has not been disclosed whether Lady Thor has been microchipped and from the photographs of her that have been made available it does not appear that she was outfitted with either a collar or a tattoo. If she is wandering around without identification that is certainly going to make it more difficult, albeit not impossible, for the Mowatts to get her back. Therefore, the key to relocating her would seem to lie in getting photographs of her as quickly as possible into the hands of rescue personnel as well as the general public.

If indeed Lady Thor's misadventures have left her marooned in some unknown strange and distant place she has a considerable amount in common with a three-year-old brown and gray tomcat with bright green eyes named Poussey who mysteriously disappeared without so much as a trace on April 22, 2013 from the home that he shared with Sandrine Foehr and her family in La Havre. Unbeknownst to them, he was found two days later wandering the automobile deck of the P&O Ferry as it wended its way across the English Channel from Calais to Dover in Kent.

Poussey and Sandrine Foehr

Since it is two-hundred-seventy-four kilometers from La Havre to Calais, Poussey quite obviously did not walk that great of a distance, especially in forty-eight hours. He therefore was transported there by car, but it never was determined whether he made the trip as an unwitting stowaway or as the victim of a botched kidnapping.

After being corralled by the ship's crew, he was immediately handed over to the Port of Dover Police upon docking and likely would have been killed on the spot if it had not been for the compassion shown him by PC David Palmer. "Javert (as he had christened Poussey) was effectively on death row," he later revealed. "If an animal arrives without a pet passport, it becomes a rabies danger and must be put down or go into quarantine."

Humanely opting for the second alternative, Palmer was able to prevail upon Jeremy Stattersfield of Burnham House Veterinary Surgery in Dover to issue Poussey a pet passport and to vaccinate him. The veterinarian then took it upon himself to arrange for the wayward tom to spend his first three weeks of quarantine at The Animal Inn on Dover Road in Ringwould, near Deal.

After that impromptu living arrangement had run its course, he cleared the way for him to stay at the Rhodes Minnis Cat Sanctuary outside Folkestone. He even was able to convince La Fondation Brigitte Bardot to pay for Pouseey's quarantining.

"He is a very affectionate cat and it wasn't his fault he found himself in the wrong country," is how he later explained his rationale for intervening. "We just had to help him."

All the while that Stattersfield was busily working his many wonders, Palmer had embarked upon a campaign to locate Poussey's owner. Relying upon information deciphered from an implanted microchip, he prevailed upon Major Arnauld Caron of the Police aux frontières to have the local authorities in La Havre leave a note on the door of Poussey's address.

Both Palmer's and Caron's carefully laid plains nearly came to naught however because Foehr had neglected to update the contract information contained in Poussey's microchip. As a result, the note from Palmer was delivered to his old abode instead of his current address.

Although by this time he had been missing for almost two months, Foehr never had given up searching for him and as a consequence she traveled to his old address and, amazingly, discovered Palmer's letter. That in turn led to her happy reunion with Poussey at Stattersfield's surgery on Castle Street.

If it had not been for the extraordinary efforts of Palmer, Stattersfield, and the Police aux frontières Foehr never would have either seen Poussey again or even known what had happened to him. Even as things eventually turned out, he came within a hairbreadth of being unceremoniously liquidated. (See Cat Defender post of July 25, 2014 entitled "Poussey Overcomes a Surprise Boat Ride to Dover, a Stint on Death Row, and Being Bandied About Like a Flying Dutchman in Order to Finally Make It Home to La Havre.")

In early September of the same year, a two-year-old brown and gray female named Poppy somehow made it eight kilometers from her home in Bradwell to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk where she unwittingly found herself on a boat bound for an oil rig in the North Sea. The crew belatedly discovered her presence on board but that was not until they were forty-eight kilometers from shore.

They kept her safe, warm, and well-fed until they returned to shore and surrendered her to the RSPCA in East Norfolk. An implanted microchip later revealed that she belonged to fifty-six-year-old Janet Holland and the duo were successfully reunited on September 16th.

Poppy and  Janet Holland

"The RSPCA phoned me quite early in the morning and when they told me where she'd been, I thought I was dreaming," she later told London's Express on September 20th. (See "Cat Reunited with Owner after Sneaking onto Ship Bound for Oil Rig.")"I cannot thank them or the ship's crew enough. They probably don't realize just how much this means to me."

Poppy, who earlier had lost her tail to a hit-and-run motorist, has a tendency to roam but she never before had ventured very far from home. "She has a little friend over the back she goes and plays with and she's known for wandering around the school playing field," Holland disclosed to the Express. "But Poppy had never spent a night away from home so we thought the worst."

As was the case with Poussey, it is unlikely that Poppy walked all the way from Bradwell to Yarmouth. Consequently, it would seem likely that she either was kidnapped or made the journey as an unwitting stowaway in a motor vehicle.

This is mere supposition but the motorist who drove her to Yarmouth surely must have dumped her on the docks as well. It is even conceivable that she was kidnapped with the intention of having her as a companion on the oil rig. That is because although cats are known for incurring streaks of notoriously bad luck, it strains credulity that she wandered into an automobile and then onto a boat all by her lonesome and in such a short span of time.

As the dramatic rescues of both Poussey and Poppy have amply demonstrated, there is hope that the Mowatts may yet be successfully reunited with Lady Thor. Moreover, they have at least two advantages over Foehr and Holland.

First of all and unlike Poussey, it is believed that Lady Thor is still in Scotland. Consequently, the Mowatts do not have to contend with either international entanglements or quarantine fees and restrictions.

Secondly, there is not anything in the record to even remotely suggest that she has been transported to an offshore oil rig. She therefore likely is still on terra firma and that enables the Mowatts to search high and low for her without incurring either any legal or geographical constraints.

The important thing for them to do is neither to give up hope nor to stop searching for her. In furtherance of that objective, they need to devise a detailed plan of action and to see it through to completion. Lady Thor never would give up on them and they likewise never should give up on finding her.

Perhaps most important of all, the Mowatts have money and with it almost anything, either good or bad, is possible. It is an entirely different story for the impecunious who love their cats every bit as much as the privileged love theirs but, owing to circumstances beyond their control, are unable to do very much for them in their times of greatest need. Carpe diem!

Anyone who has seen Lady Thor or knows where she can be found is urged to promptly contact the Mowatts by either telephone at 44-01856-831329 or online at www.skerriesbistro.co.uk. Locating her is the only way that this once happy trio can ever be made whole once again.

Photos: Press and Journal (Lady Thor), Facebook (Lady Thor), Daily Mail (Poussey and Sandrine Foehr), and the Express (Poppy and Janet Holland).

Bubba

"I thought I heard something and, sure enough, her paw stuck out and she meowed, and well, I near fainted."
-- Howard Hogan

At times it is difficult to know exactly what to think about some of the cat stories that make the news. That is largely because neither their owners and guardians, rescue groups, nor the capitalist media are renowned for telling the unvarnished truth.

A good case in point is the hellish nightmare that was visited upon a strikingly colorful eighteen-year-old tortoiseshell named Bubba from the small rural community of St. Felix on the western tip of Prince Edward Island (PEI). Specifically, she disappeared from the house that she shares with Howard Hogan and Lucina Costain on January 31st and was not found until forty days later on March 11th.

The details are a bit sketchy but apparently she had spent that entire period trapped in a snow-covered hole beneath their front porch. It is not even clear if her rescue from the ten-foot by four-foot subterranean dungeon with only about a foot's worth of vertical clearance came as the result of a conscious effort on the part of Hogan to belatedly find her or was merely an accidental byproduct of his snow removal activities.

"I thought I heard something and, sure enough, her paw stuck out and she meowed, and well, I near fainted," he afterwards related to the CBC on March 20th. (See "Bubba the Cat Found after Forty Days Under Snow-Covered Deck.")"Lucina was looking out the window, and I told her, I yelled 'The cat is alive!' and she come (sic) out running."

Although emaciated and unsteady on her feet, Bubba still had enough in the way of reserves in order to follow her guardians indoors. They started her off on warm milk and gave her only small portions of food at first but by the following day she had recuperated sufficiently enough in order to resume taking her customary daily rations.

Not surprisingly, she was rather weak as the muscles and bones in her legs had atrophied. She recovered quickly, however, and by March 14th was able once again to leap up into her regular sitting chair.

It is believed that she subsisted throughout her long and grueling ordeal by eating grass, rodents, and snow. Being a rather large cat, Bubba also had reserves of fat that came in especially handy.

The Snow-Colored Porch Where Underneath Bubba Lived for Forty Days

"That's what saved her; she was overweight," Hogan declared to The Journal Pioneer of Summerside on March 18th. (See "Family Cat Found Under Snowbank Forty Days after She Went Missing.")

The porch and the nearly three meters of snow that fell on St. Felix during her incarceration also served to provide her with a measure of insulation and thus to protect her from succumbing to hypothermia. Her misadventures have thus demonstrated once again the prominent role that porches and the areas underneath them play in the lives of cats that, for one reason or another, get caught outside during cold and snowy weather. (See Cat Defender posts of February 23, 2015 and March 14, 2015 entitled, respectively, "Abandoned to Tough It Out by His Lonesome in the Deadly Michigan Cold and Snow, Flick Sustains Horrific Injuries to His Front Paws When They Become Frozen to a Porch" and "Ace Is Found Frozen to a Porch with His Eyes Gouged Out but the Authorities Are Too Lazy, Cheap, and Ailurophobic to Go after His Assailant.")

Although Bubba's death-defying ordeal makes for scintillating reading, there is a dark and disturbing undercurrent to her story. First and foremost is the petit fait that she easily could have been spared her nightmarish misadventure if only her guardians had cared enough about her in order to have mounted anything other than half-hearted rescue attempts.

For instance, on the night that she disappeared Costain spent only thirty minutes searching for her. Fully aware that the hole was one of Bubba's favorite haunts, she shoveled down to it the following day but, failing to locate her wayward feline, she then abandoned the search.

For his part Hogan claims to have shoveled the spot a couple of times during the weeks that followed before he, too, threw in the towel. That is in spite of the fact that he has admitted to later having heard her crying for help on several occasions.

Instead of mounting an all-out search for her, Hogan and Costain contented themselves with falsely believing that she had been eaten by either a dog or a coyote. At other times they excused their glaring lack of concern for her welfare by kidding themselves into believing that she had run away from home of her own volition.

Their account of events simply is not plausible owing to the fact that it should have been rather easy to have tracked her movements from the paw prints that she would have left behind in the snow if she had ventured from the house. Secondly, it would have been all but impossible for her to have gotten very far considering the huge amount of snow that was on the ground. Thirdly, they knew all along about the existence of the hole and her tendency to seek sanctuary there.

Bubba and Lucina Costain

In that light it would be interesting to know not only how long Hogan and Costain have cared for Bubba but, in general, how well that they have treated her. In addition to their lackadaisical rescue efforts, there are other subtle indications that they do not care very much about her.

For starters, Bubba is a derogatory moniker for a cat, especially for such an attractive, loyal, and mature female. Secondly, Hogan's simply disgraceful tendency to refer to her as "the cat" does not inspire confidence in his fidelity to her.

If a reputable and trustworthy animal protection group should exist on PEI, it might want to look into Costain's and Hogan's neglect and mistreatment of Bubba. That is especially the case in that, considering her advanced years, she needs and deserves guardians who not only love her but are attentive to her needs. Above all, she needs to be protected from want, predators, and the elements.

Speaking of the latter, PEI and the remainder of the Canadian maritimes dodged another bullet earlier this week when an anticipated springtime snowstorm fizzled out into just plain rain. Hogan reportedly filled in the hole beneath his porch immediately after Bubba's rescue but he did so with snow and it surely has melted by now.

Consequently, the hole is now exposed and Bubba easily could find herself trapped there again the next time that it snows heavily. Unless Hogan and Costain are willing to shovel it out every time that Bubba goes missing they should fill it in with dirt so as to prevent her from becoming entombed there once again.

Bubba's misfortunes bear a striking similarity to those that befell a ten-year-old black and white female named Emmy from Dame Agatha's hometown of Torquay in Devon back in 2007. In October of that year she is believed to have followed her unidentified male guardian into an outside storage shed where she became trapped.

She thus remained in the unheated shed without either food or water for the following nine weeks until the man belatedly discovered her presence and freed her in late December. Although he and his wife later claimed that they had invested weeks in searching for her, they inexplicably never once looked inside the shed. The most logical conclusion to be drawn from that glaring oversight is that they already knew exactly who that they would find there.

Emmy and an Unidentified Staffer at Torbay

When she finally was rescued Emmy was almost skeletal and near death. Based upon tongue marks left on the windowpanes of the shed, it is theorized that she survived by lapping upon condensation. She also may have snared an few bugs and an occasional mouse from time to time.

Taken to the Torbay Blue Cross Center in the Watcombe section of that town, also in Devon, she eventually recovered but had, at least temporarily, lost the ability to jump due to atrophy in her legs. Her trying ordeal also had left her with, quite understandably, such debilitating psychological scars as a fear of tight places and of being left alone.

"Emmy survived a nightmare ordeal and lived to tell the tale and now needs a good home," a spokesperson for Torbay said following her rescue. "If only she could speak and let us know how she got through it because she has an amazing story to tell."

The charity also incomprehensibly fell hook, line, and sinker for the couple's rather tall tale. "Her owner really had no idea where she was," Torbay's Laura Valentine swore to the media.

Such patently obvious balderdash as that really takes the cake in that the couple would have had to have been deaf not to have overheard her meowing and scratching at the woodwork and windowpanes for such an extended period of time. That is even more so the case in that cats tend to be most active at night when the sounds of the city give way to stillness and quiet.

Even if their locking of Emmy in the shed was unintentional, that fails to explain their haste in getting rid of her so soon after she was rescued. According to press reports at that time, the couple was too broken up about what had happened to her in order to retain custody of her. C'est-à-dire, since they already had abandoned her for nine weeks, they ultimately decided to go whole hog and thus run out on her once and for all time.

They also lamely claimed that she would not fit in at the new house that they were acquiring. Needless to say, neither explanation is believable, especially when viewed in light of previous events.

Emmy's Would-Be Tomb

Torbay perhaps unwittingly came the closest to the truth when it described Emmy as "a loving cat who needs constant attention and care." The organization further claimed that she was "not too good with young children but a home with teenagers would be fine."

Consequently, there can be little doubt that her owners had wanted to get rid of her, one way or another, for a considerable period of time. That by no means constitutes proof that they intentionally left her in the shed to die but it does point to that distinct possibility. (See Cat Defender post of January 23, 2008 entitled "Emmy Survives Being Locked in an Outdoor Storage Shed for Nine Weeks Without Either Food or Water.")

There are three common denominators to be found in the misadventures of Bubba and Emmy. First of all, in both instances the explanations provided by their respective guardians are difficult, if not impossible, to believe.

Secondly, even if against all odds they should be telling the truth that in no way excuses either their callousness or their abject failure to seriously search for their errant cats. Thirdly, neither of them contacted the authorities or posted any "Lost Cat" notices and that is doubly suspicious.

Most distressing of all, there is not very much that concerned cat lovers can do about such callous and neglectful behavior. That is because, first of all, it is impossible for any individual, no matter how dedicated, to care for every cat that needs protection.

Secondly, just about all animal rescue groups are complete frauds in that the only solution that they have to offer homeless and abused cats are jabs of sodium pentobarbital. As a consequence, calling upon their assistance is an extremely dicey proposition.

As bleak as the situation may be, it is imperative that the alarm bells continue to be sounded. Bubba and Emmy survived their close brushes with death but countless other cats are suffering and dying all alone and under similar circumstances at this moment and they never must be forgotten.

Photos: Eric McCarthy of The Journal Pioneer (Bubba alone and with Lucina Costain), Rhonda Constain (snow-covered porch), and the Daily Mail and SWNS (Emmy and the shed).